


as for praise and worship

by squigly



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Angst, Art Theft, Background Relationships, Case Fic, Crimes & Criminals, Drugs, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Mystery, Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, dumbass, george is a detective and dream is a, plot heavy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:28:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 56,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28664748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squigly/pseuds/squigly
Summary: “Unfortunately,” George echoes. His brain won’t quiet. “What did she mean, when she told you to be careful?”“It’s nothing,” Dream says. He slides past George in an attempt to get to the door, but then George grabs his shoulder, making him freeze in his tracks.“Tell me,” George says. “Does she mean with him? Or with—”Me?Dream looks at him. “Please don’t ask me questions I can’t answer,” he says, in a quiet voice. “I’m too scared I’ll answer.”**George is a detective working for Scotland Yard investigating a string of art thefts linked to grisly murders. Dream is a gambler who knows more than he lets on. They can't stay away from each other, even when they should.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 61
Kudos: 125





	1. BAD FEELING

**Author's Note:**

> hey yall im very excited for this fic first one i've written for dnf :3 dedicated to the gc for bullying me about it
> 
> songrecs for chapter 1/songs i listened to while writing: sister/nation by brockhampton, desert by brand new, and the thrill of it all by black sabbath :D

> As for praise 
> 
> And worship, I prefer the latter. Only memory
> 
> Makes us kneel, silent and still.

Jericho Brown, "Psalm 150" 

It’s still dark when George buzzes into the police department, so dark he can see the cherry of his cigarette in the reflection of the glass door. On the other side, there’s a young woman with a shock of pink hair tapping away at a computer. The night shift secretary. When she looks up at him she does it with a start, like she hadn’t been expecting some scary fuck silohuetted against the Floridian heat. 

She opens the door instead of inviting him in, and—in an unexpected European accent—says, “Can you put that out, please?”

“Right,” George says. He looks around for a cigarette receptacle, and then he looks around for a slew of concrete, but all he finds is dirt and plants. He resigns himself to stubbing it out under his shoe. The secretary doesn’t say anything. 

“Follow me, follow me,” she says, and clasps her hands together tightly against her chest as she walks back behind her desk. George hears the doors snap shut behind him. “You’re the British detective, aren’t you? How was your flight?” 

“Oh, fine,” he says, the nerves under his skin jutting out under the mandatory suit. It was not fine. He’d stopped in Amsterdam and barely made it to D.C., and then he’d had to fly into Orlando the same night, promised accommodations he wasn’t looking forward to. “I, um, had enough time to speak with the Art Crimes unit before they flew me into Orlando. Beautiful city.” 

“Just don’t make smalltalk about Disney World and I’d agree with you,” she says. She clicks into a list of records, and he sees the time flash on her monitor—a quarter to five, and it’s still inky and dark like the bottom of a swamp. “Our Chief of Police would have preferred to introduce you to the precinct himself, but—well, we’re not all early birds.” Her eyes flick up at him. “Lieutenant Baker is overseeing an interrogation, but—”

“There’s no rush,” he says. “I could always come back in the morning. I haven’t actually set my—”

The metal archway hiding the rest of the precinct opens with a buzz, and a girl with a frazzled braid rushes out, cradling her arms close to her body as she shoulders George out of the way.

“I already _told_ the detectives this, but since this place is apparently run like it’s the fucking 1800s and I have to be released into my father’s custody, I don’t need anybody to pick me up and I’ll be kindly on my way. Thank you.” She steps back and runs a hand under her snotty nose, sending George a look. “What the fuck are you looking at?”

“Miss, our biggest priority is making sure we can get you home safe,” the secretary says, and her printer spits something back at her in agreement. She hands the papers to the girl, who snatches them close to her body. “These are the reports from your drug test and a copy of your written testimony, and there’ll be a cab—”

“Sure,” she says hurriedly, and her spine arches up like a worried cat. “Who’s this and why is he looking at me?” 

“I didn’t mean any disrespect,” George says. 

She leans into him. Her eyes are wide, close to bursting from the corners of her eyelids. 

“I like your suit,” she says. “Notched lapel. Only slightly crumpled.” She leans forward and runs her fingers along the edge of his suit jacket. “Pratt tie, too.” 

“Your cab is outside, Arla,” the secretary says, and turns to tug gently at the girl’s arm, but she swats her away and raises her eyebrows at George, stalking away with her shoulders still set tight as if tied together by invisible string. The secretary, in an unnecessary type of embarrassment, waits for her to leave before clearing her throat politely.

“I’m sure you… understand how victims react to unfamiliar people,” she says, and George nods, but he’s still watching the frame of the girl shrink through the glass. There’s always the rush of shame when he watches investigation units help people who need it—and that wasn’t to say that the Americans were saving the lives of every girl with a catlike spine, but he looked for paintings. One of those things was better than the other. “Here. I’ll show you where our investigators work.” 

The air is just as thick in the Criminal Investigation offices. At the center, there’s a large chestnut table where a man with a line of old stubble is dozing off, and the secretary clicks her knuckles against it as they speed past, startling him out of his sleep. She peels through the door and George sees the Lieutenant with his fingers pressed against the window.

Inside, there’s a boy with his hands cuffed against a chair, head tilted to the side as if he’s extraordinarily bored. “Look, I don’t know, Jesus Christ, it’s just my car,” he’s saying, and the detective inside scribbles something onto a legal pad. 

“It _was_ your car,” he agrees. “And how exactly does a drug dealer come in possession of a car that was never reported stolen? I certainly would’ve expected—”

“Detective Davidson,” the Lieutenant says, and rushes forward to clamp his extended hand in both of his own. He has a harrowed face and clean teeth, dark hair clumped up over his head in thick clouds. “It’s such a pleasure to meet you. Welcome to Orlando. I hope your flight was pleasant?”

“Yeah, yeah, not too bumpy,” he says, and looks back through the tinted window. 

The Lieutenant nods. “Good to hear. I’m Lieutenant Baker—Michael Baker. I’d love to introduce you to my team if you’re—”

The boy shoves his knee against the underside of the table in frustration, grating against George’s attention. 

“Oh, come on, you really want me to report my truck stolen at— _this_ fucking place?” He says, and juts his shoulder out again as if to signal the entire building. “I walk in and that—fucking secretary just goes, like, _Oh, there you are again_ —would you even believe me, if I’d have bothered? It’s not the end of the world. It’s a fucking Ford.”

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” George says. Baker shakes his head.

“Just a scheduled interrogation,” he says. 

“A Ford Ranger,” the investigator tells the boy. His tie is left untied around his neck. “That model has a lot of cargo room, you know? The battery pack is under the seats instead of in the trunk.” He leans forward again. “Just enough room for—”

“I don’t know where it fucking went!” The boy says loudly, and that startles the secretary into a squeak that has her nodding herself out of the room. The Lieutenant grimaces and goes to say something through the heavy door, leaving George to watch the boy and his bobbing shoulders. Like there’s something under the table he’s being reeled to catch.

“One moment,” Baker tells him, and George watches the detective haul the boy by the handcuffs. When he comes closer to the window, George can make out the stripe of blood on his bottom lip. 

It crackles again when he comes face-to-face with the Lieutenant, who watches him with a frown working its way down his face. “Enjoyed the show, Dad?” He asks. George looks at him. He has to lift his head up. 

“Have Niki order him a cab,” Baker tells the interrogator. The boy scoffs.

“I can drive,” he says. “If—you don’t have to shove me _around_ , prick—if this fucking idiot uncuffs me, I’ll be fine. Dandy.” He runs his tongue over his lips and then spits blood on the ground. It hits George’s shoes. When he smiles up at Baker again it’s worked into his teeth. “See? All clean.” He looks over at George, then. “Sorry, man. I wasn’t aiming for you or anything.”

“It’s fine,” George says. 

“You’re drunk,” Baker says. He compacts himself to stand taller than the boy, his son. “Niki will order you a cab, and you can come and pick your car up tomorrow morning. I expect not to see you in my station again.”

“Yeah, lookin’ forward to it,” the boy says, but he hasn’t pulled his eyes away from George. He tilts his head like a curious animal. “Who’s the new guy?” 

“Clay—” Baker says tightly, but George takes over with a, “I’m with the British police. Detective Davidson. Art and Antiques Unit.”

“How fascinating,” the boy says. George scrubs the sheen of spit off of one of his dress shoes with his heel. “It’s for those stolen Backus paintings, isn’t it? It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Detective Davidson. I know the circumstances, are, um, less than ideal, but—” 

“I’ve heard enough from you,” Baker finally breaks, and the other investigator starts shoving the boy through the door with tiny grunts, and the boy just calls, “I’ll see you, detective!” And they leave George alone in the room, studying the dust on manila folders and the hiss of useless ventilation. 

He has just enough time to catch his breath. His office back home is closed to the world, but the Orlando PD is a gaping mouth of artificial newness. He would’ve much preferred to work with the Art Crime team back in D.C., but they insisted he was needed as a specialist in the hotspot. 

Baker comes through the door again. He’s holding two cups of coffee, and he motions with his head towards the table in the center of the room. George follows.

He can see the early gleam of light against the high windows, the steady bustle of early voices. “I’m—so sorry about my son,” he says. “He’s—well, I won’t make excuses on his behalf, but I will apologize for his behavior. Come. Do you take anything in your coffee?”

“Black is fine,” George says, and accepts it thankfully. He can feel the packing of dry heat onto humid heat when he gulps it down, watching Baker tap papers into place. “Fill me in. You have a chain of murders linked to my art robber?”

“More than that,” Baker says. “So—God, where to begin?” 

George supposes it started—like all things seem to—with the Narcotics unit. He’s uncomfortably familiar with how much they pry. And that’s not even to mention the lengths the Americans take: prodding about with their tetanic forceps overseas to the point where George’s supervisor heeded to the warnings and sent him on a wild goose-chase completely on his own. 

Not completely on his own. He has his passport. And he’s meant to do weekly check-ins—both with the Art & Antiques unit back home, and the FBI with the tiny tracker they slipped into the body of his loose tie.

Blocks from Tate Britain, a couple had been stabbed and left alive in a dumpster long enough to die in each other’s arms. The BBC called it the Sweetheart Murders. It chided the media over for a few weeks, enough time to shed tears about anonymous newlyweds, but then David Hockey’s _Going Up Garrowby Hill_ was reported stolen and the bloody trail of fingerprints peeked its way through the door. 

Then there was the Peacock Murder—a blue-haired woman in her family vacation home—the Hack-And-Slash Murder—the man with a grim smile etched across his face—and then the names became useless and the murders became plentiful, specific yet untargeted, gruesome yet wholly uninspiring. Just enough edge to keep housewives glued to their screens long enough to miss the editorial in the paper about the Samuel Palmer piece that had gone missing from the British Museum. 

George almost wishes they’d stuck to smaller names. He’d go as far as to doubt the news would have reported a stolen art piece if his Chief Constable hadn’t demanded they give something—anything—to the press, and—he remembers with bitterness—the international public had drawn their own conclusions. 

Kingpins are known for their inclination for stolen masterpieces, but George has never thought of it as an issue for Narcotics. They’ve taken enough cases out from under the Specialist Command’s nose; it’s rare enough for Art & Antiques to be in the spotlight without the media shifting focus to things that are easier to talk about. 

Which drugs are. They’re easier to talk about. There’s a morbid fascination, George figures, with a reality that doesn’t belong to you. His throat throbs with pain when Baker slides a laminated copy of the dead security guard, his skin muggy and blue.

“You look a bit pale,” Baker says. Even in the light. No surprise there. “Have you—worked with Homicide units?” 

“Oh,” George says. It’s less the gore and more the pins and needles in his neck. “When I was in Basic Command, yes. It’s not that. It’s—you’ve a stolen Backus, and you’re aware of it? Usually the murders precede the theft.”

The investigator George had seen in the interrogation room slides into the seat in front of Baker. He rubs at a streak of brown blood on his palm. “They wouldn’t have flown you out for a copycat, detective,” he says. He leans forward, hand outstretched. “Darryl, by the way. It’s such a pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise,” George says, taking it. “I didn’t say it was a copycat. But if he changes his pattern when coming to America, we wouldn’t be able to—” 

“We’re very strict with monitoring changes in his pattern,” Darryl says. There’s something very comforting about the sharpness of his voice. He’s very kind, for someone who already seems done with George’s shit. “That’s why we requested—support, I guess. Or why the _Lieutenant_ requested support.”

“I’d rather have a professional on the case if we’re dealing with an—organized team, as we seem to be,” Baker says roughly. He eyes Darryl again, as if this is a conversation they’ve had in the past. George studies his coffee carefully to avoid becoming a part of their mind game. “They can live without their head, but—they can’t run around without any legs.” He taps his fingers against his paper cup of coffee. “It might be a change in pattern, but that only serves to confirm what we already know about it being a group effort. And—the stolen paintings still haven’t made it to the press.” 

“But, the, um,” George says, struggling to find a way to define the bloke in the interrogation room without calling him Baker’s son. It already seems like enough of a painful reminder, based off of the way Baker’s eyebrows wrinkle. “The—boy from earlier?”

“Yes,” he says. “He’s—I wouldn’t worry about what he knew. He runs in seedy circles. Are you staying nearby?”

“An Airbnb,” George says. Against his own volition, he’d been booked in a suburban house suspiciously similar to the set of the Brady Bunch. “Hopefully my suitcases have made it before I do.” He looks out of the window again, and Baker follows his eyes, the sun orange and dirty. The precinct wakes up alongside it, but George’s exhaustion is so harsh and immediate he doesn’t even bother with an excuse for trying to find it. “I—hope I can join you tomorrow morning?”

“Absolutely,” Baker says, and then it’s another round of shaking hands and holding coffee and finding bright hallways that all look the same, roguelike and confusing, until Darryl grabs the back of George’s elbow and says, “Here, I’ll walk you to your Uber.” 

They don’t talk much. “Feel like my brain’s made out of fucking sludge,” George murmurs, and then Darryl, unexpectedly, laughs. The corners of his eyes even crinkle up. It’s quite healing, after having dealt with the pound of his blood against his ears for the past twelve hours of travel.

“Heat’ll do it to you,” Darryl says. 

“Less the heat and more the getting here,” George says. This time, as they walk into the direction of the archway closing against the secretary’s hallway, he’s almost shouldered by women holding folders and men in beat-cop uniforms, all giving him an identical smile. He grimaces away from them and looks at his feet instead. “You’ve a good unit here. How big is your team?”

“I’m sure you’ll meet them all tomorrow, but there’s five of us,” Darryl says. “Excluding our beat-cops and the Baker.” He looks at George again. “That’s just—what we call the Lieutenant. He’s a good manager and all, but—he can be a hardass.”

“Looks like it,” George says. A bespectacled man is sitting at the desk where the secretary had been earlier in the morning; he’s put a potted plant on the table and smiles at them when George pushes out of the door. Too many smiles for his liking. “Was that really his kid in there?”

“Clay,” Darryl says, as an explanation. “Yeah. He’s—a fun one.” Before George can start looking around for his car in the first inches of dewy light, Darryl takes a step back, shielding his eyes from the reflection of the sun. “Listen, I have to get back. But, I mean, I’m—really looking forward to working with you, man. You seem like you actually know what you’re doing.”

“I don’t,” George says. He shakes Darryl’s hand again. “I’ll see you.”

A car with a loud radio is idling at the end of the street. George closes his eyes against the gasoline fumes and undoes his tie, unwrapping it from his neck and picking against the lining so he can find the bug. It’s a tiny square chip, metal arms clinging to the thread of his tie, and he rounds around the corner of the precinct building before he drops it to the floor and crushes it with his heel. 

He smears electronic guts behind him when he walks down the sidewalk, looking at the soil and how the building roars to life on the inside; outside, the street is completely silent. In an odd way, it’s probably the safest street in Orlando: early in the morning and outside the police department, empty of people but with cops just close enough by.

He doesn’t see anyone a good distance away, so George ducks against the row of shrubbery concealing the garage exit of the police department, locking his feet against the broken sidewalk. He digs for the pill bottle in his coin wallet and finds it sufficiently unrattled. 

_A reality that doesn’t belong to you_ , he thinks again, and props it under his arm so he can find his Altoids tin. He crushes one of the Xanax tabs with the knuckle of his forefinger, blowing the dust back against the metal, and he’s just about readied it for sniffing when he hears, “Detective Davidson?”

He freezes, his heart hammering in his ears. It’s not a cop. It’s the Lieutenant’s son, which is almost worse; he’s grinning ear to ear, and it’s such a pathetic smile, like he’s just discovered something only he’s happy to see. 

“Detective _Davidson_ ,” he says, and walks closer.

“What,” George says.

Clay blinks at him, very slowly. George wonders if it’s because he towers so dramatically that all of his motions seem altered. “‘ _What’_?” He repeats, voice working too quickly for George’s working theory. “I just played dumb in an interrogation room for, like, an hour, so I think I know what you’re trying to do pretty well.” He snaps the pill bottle from George’s fingers. “You smuggled this overseas, huh?” 

“It’s prescribed,” George says.

“If it was prescribed, you wouldn’t be snorting it,” Clay snaps back, with just as much intensity. George shrinks against it, snatching the bottle back and tucking it into his coin wallet before he can do something stupid like offer him some so he’ll quiet. “I’m not gonna kiss and tell, detective, come on. _Among the human vices, he considered cowardice one of the first_ , right? Bulgakov? Whatever. Don’t worry about it.” He picks at the wound on his bottom lip. “Just wanted to say hi. You’re working on the art stolen from the Fort Pierce museum, right?”

“How did you know that?” George says. “I doubt it’s because you’re the Lieutenant’s son.”

“ _Step_ son, first of all,” Clay says. “But, yes. No. It’s not because I’m his—I just know where to ask my questions, is all. And it’s not just my Art History professors.”

“Right,” George says. It’s not that he’s in any position to question the legitimacy of some bloke’s course of study, but the bruise on his face and the stupid way he’s grinning at George—like a wolf with human teeth—do not exactly scream _reverent scholar_. “What was your name again?”

“Dream,” Clay says.

“Not Clay,” George says. 

“No, not Clay,” Clay says. “And you’re—”

“George.”

“Not—”

“ _Not_ Detective Davidson, yes,” George says, the frustration ebbing in his skull. It would’ve been gone by now, and he’d have been able to doze off in his Uber already if this bloke—Dream—knew when to keep things to himself. It’s almost odd to him that he’d even bother coming to talk to George when he could’ve just—used his stupid habit as some sort of leverage. “Look, do you need anything from me? Because I’ve been travelling for God knows how long and I’d love to be in bed right now.” 

“With your pills,” Dream says helpfully.

“ _Yes_ , with my pills,” George says. “I’m a specialist for the Yard, so yes, my fucking pills. I’d ask you not to go tell on me to your father, but—”

“Oh, come on,” Dream says. “That’s not what I wanted. Listen. I’ve been—these cops have never gotten anything done. All right? You’re better off working somewhere like New York if you genuinely want to catch these people in what they’re doing.” 

“They’re not _in_ New York,” George says. 

“I’m willing to bet the Met is next on their hit list,” Dream says. “I know they’re working small for now, and that’s very smart and everything, but don’t you have a bad feeling? I’ve been following this case for a while. I don’t want them stealing any— _Rembrandts_ , or anything.” 

“A bad feeling,” George repeats. His mouth feels dry at that. “I don’t work off your bad feelings. You should go.” 

“It doesn’t seem to me that you work at all, detective,” Dream says. “Not without your pick-me-up.” There’s a terse beat. “I can help you.” 

George snorts at that, digging for his cell tucked into his back pocket. “It was great chatting with—”

“No, _don’t_ ,” Dream says desperately, and grabs the back of his arm from where he turns to move away. “Listen, man, come on. I don’t know who’s behind the murders—or the theft, or anything like that—but God, there’s so much shit my father couldn’t tell you.” His eyes scale over George’s face. “If you ever have questions, I’m—I can help you. Really.” 

“You don’t owe me anything,” George says.

“This isn’t about you,” Dream says. “My truck got stolen and they found cocaine in the trunk, and then that security guard is found dead with it in his system after being clean his entire life. And they called my girlfriend in about it, thinking they could get an upper hand over me. Do you see what I’m getting at? This shit is going to ruin me.”

“ _You’re_ going to ruin you,” George says, rattling his phone in his hand. He thinks back on the girl he saw in the hallway. If she hadn’t made him look down at his tie, that bug would be watching him have this conversation. “I don’t need your help—you don’t get to play detective when it’s convenient for you. Just stay out of the way and you won’t get in trouble. It’s not difficult.” 

“If only that worked,” Dream says, and then grabs George’s hand. He tenses up, clenching up his fist and trying to jerk it away. Dream uncaps a pen with his mouth.

“I’m a spoken ‘n accounted for man, d’tective, s’no friendly phone-calls,” Dream says, voice muffled by the cap between his teeth. The ballpoint pen stretches over the back of George’s skin, massaging against the veins on the back of his hand. “That’s a one, by the way, not a seven. If a dude goes missing and my dear old dad doesn’t say anything about it because he’s already arrested him twice, you know who to call about it.” 

When Dream leaves, George tries to rub the ballpoint pen off of his skin. It doesn’t lift off and barely smudges.


	2. SECONDARY SURVEY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You let them get away with a lot or something?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also just a warning that i do not know anything about police procedurals in the uk i just love law and order 
> 
> songs i listened to during this chapter hehe: puppet & a boy is a gun by tyler the creator, tranquility base hotel and casino by the arctic monkeys!!!

George remembered that once, when he was little, his mum had asked him _if you could ask God a question, what would you want to know_? And he couldn’t remember what he’d answered. Or if he’d answered at all. But it was a good question—he’d never wanted to know much. He wasn’t naturally curious. 

But he was stubborn. Very fucking stubborn. Linking stolen art together was an art form within itself. Both the Backus and the Hockey were landscapes, several eras of artistic styles apart; the murders were harder, only able to be linked post-mortem when pathologists eliminated suicides as a possibility. Which—Darryl had informed him—they almost never did. 

“It’s always cleaner to rule out the murders,” he tells George, as he wheels out the whiteboard they’re using to prop up crime scene photos. “Cleaner, better for the media. Well, not better—the more murders the Orlando Sentinel gets to report on, the easier it is to tide them over. But it makes it harder for them to call us useless and crooked. Hank! Did you get my bagel?”

“I got you _a_ bagel,” Hank says, dropping a brown doggie bag in front of him. Darryl opens it excitedly, but he burns his fingers on the tinfoil and drops it on the table. “They didn’t have chicken salad, but I got you a bagel. Oh, George, here’s your tea.”

“What?” George says, turning around in surprise. Hank raises his eyebrows and hands him the disposable coffee cup—black tea with milk and no sugar. The same order he’d asked for yesterday, when Hank introduced himself and asked him for his coffee order. It’s almost romantic. “Oh. Thank you, mate.”

“No problem,” Hank says. “Where’s the Lieu?”

“Recuperating,” Darryl says, sucking on his burnt finger regretfully. They share a look that implies a lot of heated history. George busies himself with sorting through a testimony he doesn’t recognize so that he can yawn in peace. He’s not very good with fixing his jetlag, and he knows that’s slightly more understandable than Baker not timing his overtime well, but he’s still full of a jittery urge to prove himself as up and active. “Sarge isn’t here yet either. Give it a few. They really didn’t have chicken salad?”

“I mean, they did, but I didn’t want my car smelling like it,” Hank says.

“One sacrifice,” Darryl says. “One sacrifice for the greater good.”

“Your bagel isn’t the greater good,” Hank says. “Did you get consent for the car search last night?” 

Darryl rolls his eyes and rocks back in his spinning chair, threading a pen between his fingers. George looks at the back of his hand; the ballpoint is faded, from when he showered last night. He had just enough time to input the number into his phone. “No. McKenna’s getting us a warrant. Morning, Sergeant.” 

“I talked to him about a warrant yesterday evening,” Alvarez says as a greeting, knotting her dark hair into an effortless bun on top of her head. She hadn’t introduced herself to George properly, as she’d been late to a rapist’s arraignment court because she was running a case to Cyber Crimes while discussing a cold case with a pathologist who’d found an inconsistency. All while somehow having the time to talk to a lawyer about a search warrant. George isn’t sure if the stressors she places on herself are admirable or worrying. “Go check on the progress, Noveschosch.” 

“Great, okay, on it,” Darryl says, and sends George a look as he gets up out of his seat with his sad bagel in hand. George’s fingers itch for progress; all he’s done so far is settle in and answer a call from the agent who’s supposed to be working him through this case. He knows the real reason was because he stomped the bug into the ground, but he didn’t get any questions about it. 

“How much progress have you made on the museum crime scene?” George asks. Alvarez cocks a hip against the whiteboard. Her skin is darker, but the circles under her eyes are the color of white bacon. 

“It’s closed off to the public and we’ve already swabbed it for evidence,” Alvarez says. “Our specialists are working on a reconstruction back in the lab. Alyssa’s down there overseeing the secondary survey. Harris, if you—”

“Secondary survey?” George interrupts. “Of the entire museum? Already?” 

“To tell you the truth, detective, the crime scene for the murders is our top priority,” Alvarez says, which—of course. He doesn’t miss the edge of elitism in her voice, though he isn’t sure if his subconscious brain is accidentally searching for it. 

“There’s a reason I was called here, Sergeant,” George says. “I’m going to need your blood spatter analysts on the scene, and I need the parking lot and surrounded streets closed.”

Alvarez’s eyes jut from him to the table, then back again. She nods, tersely, instead of opening her mouth to ask, so Hank pushes himself out of his seat and clears his throat loudly instead. There seem to be certain circumstances where she’s fine with people asking questions for her.

“Why do you need blood spatter analysts?” He asks.

“When one of the artworks from a museum in the North was stolen, the brown ink and glass varnish residue that dripped on the floor had a similar consistency to blood,” George says. The truth was that it was mostly a mistake: one of the inspectors had called in the incorrect analysts, who told them that the patterns were indicative of a rushed job, the same way you’d carry a bleeding person. “We’ve kept an expert on the scene since.” 

“Alla prima,” Alvarez says.

“Yes,” George says. 

“The Backus gallery only holds dead paintings,” Alvarez says. “It was very clearly targeted because it’s easier to get away with art that’s already lost to the ages. I wouldn’t worry about possible residue.”

“It’s not the residue I’m worried about,” George says. Maybe he’s too perfectionistic. He smiles at her, but her face is set in fine embroidery. “You should make some calls.”

** 

Hank offers to drive, because George still hasn’t gotten the hang of driving on the right side of the road. “I can’t believe you got the Sarge to let you bring in new faces on the scene,” he says. “She’s a bulldozer. Always wants people in their dedicated places. Seriously. Respect.”

George just snorts, looking down at his phone. There’s a tremor in his hands from where he’s missing the clutch of his fingernails against skin—from where he’s missing the feeling of a tab in his blood, but he’s never let it endanger his performance and he’s not going to start right now. Not when he’s a continent away. “It’s—quite literally the only thing I’m good at. So.”

“I doubt that,” Hank says. “What were the first few cases like? Before you guys got the hang of how to work your crime scenes, that is.”

“Stressful,” George says, thinking back. It’s very easy to lose himself in cycles of what he could’ve done better, back when the thefts were region-specific and the asshole wasn’t fleeing overseas. “We had to try and convince the Crown there was a link between homicide and our art theft case.” He rubs at the spot over his eyebrow that's pounding dramatically. “It got handed to Narcotics for a while, which was stupid and unnecessary.” 

“What is it with giving all of our cases to Narcotics?” Hank says. “Like they’re going to find a serial killer with their K9 units. Half of the department moonlights as TSA.”

“Explains a lot,” George says. He finds Fort Pierce quiet at first, but when they slow to a halt in front of the museum he finds that it’s because the nearby streets have been closed down with yellow tape. There’s a casino, the sign proclaiming its name darkened. A few grocery store employees idle confusedly, their main entrances closed off to the public. “Shit. She works fast.”

“Bulldozers can be fast,” Hank says. He exits out of the car, and George leaves his cold tea in the cup compartment before he follows him inside.

Alyssa, one of their investigators, is talking animatedly to a woman in a lab coat when George nears. The calmness of her voice is such a harsh contrast to the bustling air around them, George finds it easier to wait to ask his questions.

“Hank, Detective,” she says, nodding at them both. “Where’s Thing Two?”

“Playing hide-and-seek with Judge Spirov,” Hank says. George takes a step back to survey the museum: untouched paintings cover the walls not unlike tacked-up pieces of evidence, the faint pinks and honeydew yellows of Backus skies. It seems like less of a museum and more of a very decorated nursing home. “George was actually the one to request blood spatter analysts from Alvarez. Something about brown ink?”

“Long story,” George says. “Listen, before I explain that—the security cameras from that grocery store have been checked, yeah?”

“Oh, back on the first day we launched the investigation,” Alyssa says. Someone taps her on the shoulder to show her a clipboard, and she marks it off with a pencil before furrowing her brow back at them. “Unsurprisingly, they were broken. The casino across the street has theirs pointing on the inside, so we never bothered to collect the footage. Are you the one that closed down the streets, too?”

“Yeah, I am,” George says, growing increasingly puzzled with how gentle their voices go. Either he’s a much stronger steamroller than he’d expected to be, or investigations are scarce and quite phony here. “I’m sorry, did I—this is an international case. If it seems like I’m going too far—”

“Oh, nonono,” Alyssa says quickly. “Don’t misunderstand. We just haven’t had a murder need so many resources in the department for—a long time. It’s a welcome change of pace, but it feels very—”

“Baker likes it, is what we’re trying to say,” Hank says. “Baker likes it, and Alvarez—I mean, she doesn’t really like anything. They’re being stingy with what they’re allowing us to investigate ‘cause they figure the money from the state and the money from the press is going to chide us over until the robbers run away to California or something.” 

And against his better judgement, George remembers Dream. _There’s so much shit my father couldn’t tell you_. “That’s… not my problem,” George settles on, and takes a step back from them both. “I really doubt the casino owners didn’t see anything, if it was late at night.”

“They claim to have been closed,” Alyssa says grimly.

“And you can’t issue a witness summons?” George asks. “A warrant for the cameras?”

“...We could,” Hank says, after a beat. George crosses his arms, waiting for the inevitable explanation, but all he gets is Hank scratching his neck uncomfortably. “People don’t usually—the casino’s always had an agreement with the department, is the thing.”

George laughs, without meaning to. “Are you joking?” When Hank’s face remains unchanged, he feels his smile go dull off his face. “You’re serious? What kind of _agreement_ could you have with a casino that puts them above the law?” 

“I can talk to Alvarez about it,” Alyssa says, and raises a hand against Hank’s open mouth. “I got it, Hank. She likes me best anyway, so it’ll be better if it comes from me. Excuse me.”

“Bit fucked,” George says, when she walks away. “You let them get away with a lot or something?”

“It’s not like that,” Hank says, and then catches the way George smirks at his feet. “I mean, I don’t know. Maybe it is like that. All I know is that they’ve never closed down the shady shit that operates in their basements, and when Darryl and I went to ask them some questions they had us backed into a wall pretty quickly.” 

There’s a bitter taste in George’s mouth. “And that’s when people they know question them.”

“Yeah,” Hank says. He stops snapping on his rubber gloves to catch the look on George’s face. “Whatever you’re thinking—”

“I can wait for the warrant,” George says. He doesn’t know why that isn’t the natural conclusion they’d draw—if they’re dealing with an underground art theft ring, he feels like the first step would be to look at whatever threatening force seems to be looming over the department to _this_ extent. “We should check damage from the employee entrance.”

Hank spent a while walking him through evidence they’ve already marked off, but the employee entrance is an anomaly. They’re alone in the back entrance, hands gloved but not touching anything. “It’s mostly the damage here I’m wondering about,” George says. He runs a finger over the side of the wall; there’s two matching cracks on opposite sides of the panelling. “Damage here, and then—back here, near the fence. Was that there before?”

“The door, I’m not sure, but the fence—apparently not,” Hank says. “I can call a few CSIs in. I don’t know about you, but that looks like just enough space to park a car to me.”

“I didn’t want to say it,” George says. Nobody appreciates a rush-job. “Forensic engineers could be helpful. I know we have a visitor list from the past month, but could we compile a list of cars? Even if it’s somebody who wasn’t here during the day—” 

“No, that’s a good idea,” Hank says. “I’ll talk to Eric. You can ask the receptionist.”

“Sounds good,” George confirms, but lags behind after Hank jogs inside. The museum shields him from the midday sun, and he has enough time to press the cold tips of his fingers against his eyelids. _He’s probably on the run. He’s probably overseas. He’s probably in Miami._ He pulls his phone out of his pocket before he can stop himself—the only unlabeled number in his phone is Dream’s.

He waits, a passive few beats, watching a bird across the street drink from a puddle. “Who is it?” Dream asks, after the fourth ring. His voice is throaty and unpolished. 

“Tell me about the casino in Fort Pierce,” George says. 

He hears the rustling of sheets. “I can’t.”

“You can’t,” George repeats coolly. “So you can’t help me at all.”

“No, it’s—” Dream says, and huffs. “I _can_ , but I wouldn’t want to be a narc. You know? So whatever I tell you, it doesn’t come from me.”

“I figured that was implied,” George says. “Just tell me.” 

“Fine,” Dream says. “Fine. They—allegedly—are one of the fronts for the drug peddlers that function off the Miami harbor. And, I mean, you know how shit is in small towns. Baker won’t do jack-shit about them because they’re _allegedly_ funnelling money to him and his boss. Allegedly.” He pauses. “Why are you asking?” 

“They might’ve seen something,” George says, after a second. He isn’t sure of the best way of appeasing Dream without completely betraying the entire department he’s not a part of. “But they won’t talk to us. I reckon a subpoena is the best way around that, but—everyone’s hesitant.”

“Good luck with that,” Dream says. “You should come with me. Tonight.” 

“ _Come_ with you?” George says. Dream huffs out a laugh in a way that makes the receiver crackle with sound.

“I’m supposed to be there tonight,” he says. “I might’ve—I mean, I might _allegedly_ owe Saint Don a few thousand… hugs. And I have to go down there and give him what I’ve made so far of his. Hugs.” 

“You must give great hugs," George says. "Saint Don?” 

“So it’s settled!” Dream chirps, completely avoiding his question. “I’ll see you in front of the gallery tonight at twelve. Don’t wear purple. He doesn’t like it.” 

_I wasn’t planning on it_ , George thinks. He has to shake his head to clear it: what the fuck is he _thinking_ , talking to someone like Dream like this? The son of a police lieutenant who gambles his money away and sleeps until noon. 

“I’m not coming with you to a _casino_ ,” George says. “I’m here as a _formality_. I’m a—detective of the law.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Dream says. He hangs up.

  
  



	3. APOSTLES

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I fucking need. Because guess what, George? You’re entirely in my debt now. You didn’t owe me anything, and now you’re here and you owe me much more than you have.”

George doesn’t wear purple. He finds a black suit jacket he hasn’t worn already and crumples up the collar of one of his white dress shirts so he doesn’t look too much like a cop. Which he has to remind himself he is, even though he’s technically not authorized to be undercover.

He supposes he must be: he’s working under British jurisdiction, for one, and he has the FBI stamp of approval to peruse the self-proclaimed _whatever means necessary_. That doesn’t bring him any further comfort, when he ends up outside of the A.E. Backus Museum and Gallery for the second time in a day.

He can feel the security cameras burning red holes into his back while he waits, but his heart is so uncomfortably alive in his chest he has to smoke. He’s nursing his second cigarette by the time Dream makes an appearance.

He’s wearing a black shirt with a denim jacket, and his drying hair hangs in thin shrivels over his face. George looks at his mouth and then looks away. His busted lip is healing, slowly.

“Looking good, detective,” Dream says. “The Crown deck you out like that or what?”

“Fuck you,” George says. He watches Dream’s teeth flash when he smiles again, his thumb running over the pink sliver of his bottom lip. Getting to drop the formality around him is comforting, until George reminds himself who he is. “Do you need a cover story in here for what?”

“You can be my friend,” Dream says.

“No,” George says.

“Jesus, fine,” Dream says, affronted. “You don’t have to be a bitch about it. You being a detective won’t freak them out, but it might be easier if we just say—I don’t know. You being _British_ might freak them out, for obvious reasons. One of my classmates writing your thesis on Backus? I’ll drop you some fun facts if you get too itchy around the collar.”

“I think I can hold up fine,” George says irritably. “I don’t think it’s a great idea for me to do a lot of talking in the first place. I’ll follow your lead.”

“Good move, detective,” Dream says. “I’ve got a _great_ lead.” 

His lead ends in George getting patted down for weapons before the entrance to the poker tables. Dream waits for him, patiently, and he’s stuttering off about Saint Don enough that the bouncer nods them through without much argument. 

The casino—drenched in a finite type of darkness—is difficult to navigate. Pool tables and trays of cocktails bump into George’s thighs before he can bump into them. He resists grabbing Dream’s arm so he can be dragged through the maze. He finds the curtain at the back of the room, where the gentle jazz music drowns out conversations easier.

“Just—careful,” Dream tells him, before he pulls it aside. And then he steps through.

There’s a staircase that winds down into the basement, with walls of brick and purple tapestry. The basement is cooler, and there’s more women: some in lingerie, some frowning, some tapping cards against pool tables. Surprisingly, some of them pull at Dream’s arm as he threads through barstools. Unsurprisingly, Saint Don likes them young. 

“The _cop_ ling,” George hears, matching his smile to the hearty laugh immediately. At the end of the basement, Saint Don is sitting at a pool table with a young man and a cards dealer. He’s an older man, with a robust, happy face: his cheekbones rise higher in tempo every time he breathes. His shirt looks closer to a nightshirt, and it’s a dark, rich purple. “What’d I tell you about comin’ back here before you’s gotten my money, copling?” 

“Maybe I do have your money,” Dream says.

“You know I gotta doubt it, Dream,” Saint Don rumbles, leaning forward. His hum lifts into his voice. If George weren’t in the stomach of his casino, he’d probably find him comforting. Like a rough kiss on the cheek. “I really wish I didn’t have to, they call me the Saint for a reason, y’know? But you’s haven’t been that clean about givin’ me what I’m due before.”

“I know, I know, and I’m trying to fix that,” Dream says. He smacks a wad of money onto the table, but Saint Don doesn’t break eye contact until one of his lackeys leans over and starts thumbing through it.

“One-k down, boss,” he says.

“Well,” Saint Don says, leaning back in his seat. George turns around, watching the way Dream picks at the skin around his thumb until there’s a bubble of blood. “Halfway there already. ‘S it my fucking birthday or what? I’m proud of you, Dream. C’mere and sit down. Who’s your friend?” 

“Oh,” Dream says, and steps to the side. His shoulders relax under his jacket. “This is, um, George. We’re studying together—he’s writing his thesis on Backus.”

“George,” Saint Don repeats. And then he looks at _him_ , and George feels glued into place until he looks back up at Dream as he settles into the seat across from him. George follows. “You an art-historian-to-be?”

“Close to it,” George says, finally. “Was hoping to make some money here tonight to pay off those loans.”

“Five-And-Dime’s good for that,” Saint Don says agreeably, and runs his fingers over his deck of cards. His fingernails are dirty and lined in brown, and he reaches up with one of them to scratch under his eye. “That accent. What’s with the accent?”

“Studying from overseas,” Dream says, as an explanation.

“Let him talk, let him talk,” Saint Don says, and Dream quiets so quickly George can’t help but think it’s a good look on him—his eyes widen and his mouth thins out like a cartoon character. “Where you from?”

“London,” George says. He fidgets in his seat uncomfortably as the dealer drops a bundle of cards in front of him. He was not briefed for this. “I’m writing about the landscapes of Southern American artists. I’ve just, um, finished my section on Jerry Bywaters, actually.” 

“That Texan fuck,” Saint Don agrees. “Hope Orlando does you well, then, _George_. Who’s foldin’? ‘Cause I’m wiping the floor with all y’all asses.” 

He’s merry on his own long enough for George to lean over and whisper to Dream. “You shouldn’t be playing if you’re already in debt,” he says. 

“What are you, my fucking mom?” Dream says. George doesn’t miss the small way his voice trembles over the vowels. “Fuck off. I’m folding.” 

“What made you choose artists from the South?” One of the lackeys at Saint Don’s side asks. He’s in wire-rimmed glasses and he’s obsessively running his fingers over one of his chips, head tilted to the side. 

George shrugs. “Always figured they were the—fathers of folk art.”

“Damn right,” Saint Don says. Dream pushes his foot against George’s under the table—he must have said something right. “Backus is a genius. Shame we didn’t keep that painting for ourselves.” 

They don’t catch the way George’s hands flutter over his cards. He splits up a handful of chips to himself, but Dream is quick to kick him again and tap his knuckles against the table. One, two, three. He pushes the chips into the center. 

“You had a Backus?” George asks, disinterested. 

“Don’t know where you got that from, but Lord would I love to,” Saint Don says, and only when George looks back up at him does his sly smile split over his face. “You raising, George? Didn’t know you Brits had such a death wish, but all right, all right. Nah, we ain’t had a Backus. Once again, they use me for my brute force, don’t they, boys?” 

“You could just get one any time you wanted, I bet,” Dream says. “Museum’s right there, after all.” 

“Sure, sure,” Saint Don says. “But the fun is in the chase, isn’t it? Gettin’ ‘em back overseas. Say, George, if you’re ever back in London anytime soon—” and he elbows the dealer, who shares a laugh so artificial George wonders if anyone else can identify it. 

“What, the stolen Backus is there?” Dream asks. 

“No idea,” Saint Don says.

“Guess George didn’t have to fly all the way out, then,” Dream says, eyeing him from the side when he makes Saint Don belly-laugh. The blood from his thumb pools over into the skin of his knuckle. 

“I’m going to the bathroom,” the man in the wire-frames says. 

George feels the pocket of his trousers. The security guard hadn’t even batted an eye when he said his pill bottle was for his anxiety; a lot of people must get anxiety betting away their life savings, after all. “D’you mind if I do this here, or should I—?” He asks, pulling it up out of his pocket. 

“Table back there,” the other one of Saint Don’s men—a Disciple, evidently—says. Before Dream can do something stupid like pull him back down, George scoots out of his seat and speedwalks to the man in the wire-frames before he can lose him in the crowd.

He has just enough time before the man has finished talking to a woman in a pink slip to follow him into the bathroom. The man turns a head over his shoulder, eyes widening when he realizes George has locked the door. There’s two stalls and a dirty sink, and George can’t see himself in the mirror.

“You—” he says, and George says, “Sorry, mate. I just wanted to take a tab before I started betting too much.”

“I get it, man,” the man says. “You want a line?”

“No thanks,” George says. There’s a terse silence as the man watches him turn his back to him and tap his Xanax out into his palm. He could crush it—it would’ve been easier to explain going into the bathroom if he crushed it—but he pops it into his mouth instead, rinsing his mouth out with water. The man waits again.

“You really studying Art History?” The man asks. His voice breaks in odd places like a wafer, and his hair falls in dry, cracked brittles over his head. “Dream’s never mentioned you before.”

George runs his fingers under the tap again. The water is lukewarm, not enough of the cold shock he needs to think, burrow a way out of the situation. “I have an… interest, certainly,” he says. “But me and Dream, we’re just—just wanted me to come along, is all.”

“He was nervous?” The man asks.

“I suppose,” George says. He shouldn’t have locked the door. Someone bangs against it, and he looks up at the mirror to see the man crossing his arms, barely startled by the sound. 

“Dream’s been here a ton of times and he’s never brought anyone else around,” the man says. “Just that girlfriend with the tiny tits. What’s the real reason you’re here, huh?”

Not great. Certainly not great. “The stolen Backus,” George says. He turns, steadying his hands on the sink, and watches the way the man’s face reddens. It’s so immediate it’s like a slap of red paint onto his scraggly face. “Is it on the market now?”

The man dangles him precariously again before he answers, bringing the tension to a scream into George’s throat. He doesn’t have his gun, and he knows the man _must_ have a gun. “Who’s asking?” He says. 

“I’ve been with them since the heist in the British Museum,” George says. It’s going to take a heavy veil of bullshit to maneuver his way around this, based on the way the man’s hand is inching against the protruding linen of his suit jacket. “And what I can’t figure out—for the fucking life of me—is why they wouldn’t just stay in Europe. Keep selling the art to the United States, like they had been before.”

It’s his working theory, and the fact that the man relaxes his hands is as much of an indication as ever that George is on the right track. The satisfaction is so thick and immediate that he can’t help but confuse it with the slow thump of the blood into his brain. “The murder in Orlando was convienent for them, man,” he says. “They don’t follow the art.”

George opens his mouth to say something else, but someone bangs against the door again. “George!” He hears, and then another harsh thump. He closes his eyes against it and gives the man an apologetic look, opening it to find Dream with his fists poised against the door again.

There’s a sheen of sweat on his forehead and his hair is mysteriously tousled. “Hey,” he says lamely. “You guys peeing in here or what?” 

“What is it?” George asks. 

“Um, we should go, I think,” Dream says. “It’s late and—you know how these things go. One thing leads to another, and I’m another two thousand dollars in debt, so let’s—we have a long drive and everything.”

“George and I were just talking,” the man says. “You should’ve told Don he was part of the heists in the UK. You could’ve used him here.” 

“I didn’t know,” Dream says, shortly. If the man looks at him apologetically, he doesn’t catch it, because Dream is dragging him out of the bathroom so forcefully he can hear one of his pills rattle to the floor, and the burn of Dream’s hand pulling his arm out of the socket is so conscious and painful all he can focus on is going back to get that pill. He imagines the man with the wire-framed glasses stepping a heavy shoe above it on his way back to the pool table. He imagines the dust being sweeped up by a girl being kissed into the bathroom.

When Dream shoves him into the back alley, he says, “You want a tab?” 

“What?” Dream says. His throat lights up with the streetlight. “No, I don’t want a fucking tab. What the fuck with all of the questions? You want me banned from there for life?” When he doesn’t answer, he speaks again. “And going into the bathroom with J.G.? You didn’t have to—”

“What did he mean?” George asks. Dream pauses. “When he said _You could have used him here_. What did he mean?” Dream doesn’t respond again, bringing his thumb up so he can lick away at the blood. George doesn’t know why he doesn’t just find a bandaid, or wrap it around in the cotton of his shirt. He also doesn’t know why he grabs the collar of Dream’s shirt and pushes him up against the wall.

“ _Woahwhatthe_ —” Dream starts, and then George snarls, “What the _fuck_ did he mean?”, banging his head against the wall. He does it again, for good measure, watching the way Dream’s face contorts and he grimaces against George’s hands.

“I don’t _know_ , man,” he says. 

“Tell me what he _meant_ , you stupid fucking prick,” George says, and shoves his hand against Dream’s throat. Dream closes his eyes, nose scrunching up as his hands scraggle up to George’s.

“You’re—fuck—stronger than you look,” he says, and George can feel the way his voice struggles against his throat. “Jesus, I—I knew it was my car! Fuck. Obviously I knew it was my car. I gave it to them. I didn’t have another—I didn’t have another choice. Can you please let go now _please_? Your rings are fucking killing me.” 

George slackens his hold, but only so he can fasten his hands back into the collar of Dream’s shirt and push back up into his neck. He doesn’t feel safe letting go. “You gave them your car?”

“It was more than two thousand dollars, at first,” he says, as explanation. “I don’t know what they used it for. That much is true. But my gut tells me—”

“Fuck your gut,” George says. “Why would you offer to help me? I could turn you in right now, get your fucking dad to put the handcuffs on your wrists, and it would be entirely your fault. Entirely.” It feels, strangely, like giving him a piece of advice. “I told you you were ruining yourself.”

“Who are _you_ ,” Dream says, “To talk about ruining yourself?” 

George doesn’t loosen his hold. He’s had worse thrown at him, but at least then it was aged—with none of the newfound rawness of Dream’s hoarse voice. “Fuck you.”

“Fuck _you_ ,” Dream says. “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I fucking need. Because guess what, George? You’re entirely in my debt now. You didn’t owe me anything, and now you’re here and you owe me much more than you have.” He can hear the spit working around Dream’s mouth. “You dialed my number, didn’t you?”

George wants to say something like, _I didn’t know you’d answer_ . Something like, _I don’t know what the fuck is going on and it hurts so badly I’ll do anything to know._ Something like—something like, “Why are you doing this?”

“I need out,” Dream says. His eyes are desperate and cage something violent. “Just as much as you do. Just as much.”

“Out of _what_?” George snaps.

“Does it matter?” He asks. “So when my fucking step-father asks you how you know everything you know tomorrow morning, my name stays out of your mouth. Completely. Now let go. We seriously need to leave before we get into even more shit.”

George has worked with Narcotics before—they have little empathy for drug addicts, if any at all, but that’s for the people with needle marks on their arms and white powder around their noses. Someone you can arrest; visible realities. But he’s never been noticed. If anything, working with Art & Antiques has made it easier for his habit to fly under the radar. 

It’s very difficult to become invisible if you have, at one point, been on full blast to the world. The way Dream is—lit up like a flashing casino sign, like a streetlight, like the thick throb of a fresh wound. George has worked with Narcotics, and he spent years in Basic Command, interviewing victims and finding hair samples and working himself up a precarious ladder with sharp, plentiful needles that prick his skin. It’s not his fault that he found the bandage. 

He’d just thought he’d stopped there. It was just the pills. he wasn’t backhanded and slimy like the rest of his coworkers—who slept with prostitutes they arrested or let off old friends on speeding violations—because he was clean in everything else, sterile and spotless, fucking spotless. America didn’t have to change that. Running some fucking fool’s errand overseas didn’t have to change that. 

He has a duty to report. He has to keep reminding himself that when he pulls his hands away from Dream and runs them along his shirt, feeling the scab of gravel and the imprint of Dream’s jaw. He needs to arrest Dream right now, bring him into the station and drop him in front of the interrogation room and he’ll be able to sleep well tonight knowing he’s done his duty to not only a country he doesn’t serve, but the modern ideal of justice.

He knows this well. He knows this well when he says, “Fuck. Fuck, fine. Let’s go.” He knows this just as well when he gets into Dream’s beat-up Rent-A-Car and watches the way the Floridian palm trees whip against the dark sky like leather belts.

  
  



	4. WHITE NOISE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “How are you surprised about the entire world being so fucking loud? Just stop moving. You know how kids learn to cry themselves to sleep? Jesus. Give it a minute. Drink your coffee.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for slight descriptions of gore in this chapter!! someones face gets stomped in and theres some description of it so
> 
> it starts at the paragraph "arla moves closer" and ends at "what the fuck are you looking at, cop" (lol) if you need to skip!! <3 
> 
> i hope u enjoy!!!

The investigation team doesn't believe him. He can tell because of the way Alvarez stares at them all, with her fingernails scratching through even lines already in the table. Like she’s daring them to agree with him. 

“And where did you hear this, exactly?” Alvarez says. 

“Does it matter?” George asks. _My name stays out of your mouth._

“ _Yes_ ,” Baker says. George doesn’t want to look at him, for fear that he’ll see Saint Don somewhere on his face. “If the judge couldn’t have been convinced that we had probable cause for a warrant, any other way around their testimony is—I’m sure you’re aware how witness summons are usually undertaken here.”

“I am,” George says. Arguing his case is less useful than just telling the department what they need to do if they want to appear on the surface treading water. “I—it was a coincidence. My source divulged more than I was expecting.”

“Making friends, detective?” Alvarez says dryly. George doesn’t look away from Baker, who looks like he’s trying to balance a difficult equation in his head.

“I wouldn’t want federal agents in your department unless absolutely necessary,” George says. It’s a threat he’s seen work on his supervisors previously, and Baker scratches at his neck uneasily. “And I hate to inform you I’m working under their authority as well as my home country’s. I think this could be a step in the right direction, and I’m—frankly confused as to why you haven’t investigated this thread before.”

“Most of our efforts have been dedicated to the overdose,” Alvarez says, forcing George to look over at her. Baker nods alongside her words, but it does little to actually elevate them. “Three days undercover in Miami has… fared worse on better men.”

“I consider that an insult,” Darryl says. 

“It was an insult,” Alvarez says. “Davidson, I can’t—”

“This is a formality,” George says. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, playing nice with the Orlando department. Asking for permission, memorizing coffee orders, turning small-talk into later conversations—he’s already gone to dinner once with Darryl and Hank, and the worst part is that he enjoyed it. “I don’t need your permission.”

Alvarez shares a look with Baker again. She may speak for him, but he wields her power thinly. “One car,” Baker says, finally. “One car, wires, and you’re bringing Noveschosch and Harris with you.”

“Only two of you are to be undercover at one time,” Alvarez adds. She turns away from George, which he appreciates, because otherwise he might’ve done something ridiculous like gloat in her face. Alyssa is left pouting into her palm when Baker retreats back into his office and Alvarez says something about the bathroom.

“So you’re all going to spend three days in Miami while I interview every single person who’s been to the Fort Pierce museum in the past week and owns a pickup,” Alyssa says, as Hank and Darryl fist-bump. “Great. That’s cool. I’m not fuming or anything.” 

“It’s for work, Alyssa, come on,” Darryl says. “We’re going undercover to find a drug peddler who might be housing stolen art. Where’s your professionalism?”

“It’s for work, but we can still make it a boy’s day,” Hank says, wheeling his chair around to look at George. He hides his smile with a cough into his fist. “Am I right, George? Boy’s day?”

“Boy’s day,” Darryl agrees. Alyssa drops her face into her folded arms and fakes a sob. “Oh, come on, Alyssa. We’ll bring you a knickknack or something.”

“One of those bottles full of tiny shells,” George says. 

“I don’t _want_ a bottle full of tiny shells,” Alyssa says.

The three-hour drive is peppered with enough gas-stations to fill an entire gift basket of useless trinkets. George picks out a taxidermy alligator head and Darryl finds a teddy bear wearing a University of Miami shirt, so Hank is left to scour the rest stops for bottles full of tiny shells. By the time they check into their hotel, George has little energy to head out to the South Beach.

“The earlier we get out there, the easier it’ll be to convince people we’re there every night,” Hank tells him, as they tip three police-mandated suitcases into their measly motel rooms. George, luckily, has his own bed to sleep on, but it does little to make up for the herds of partygoers that spill out of the neighboring rooms. “Just don’t wear— _that_.”

“What’s wrong with this?” George says. It’s not that different from what he’d worn to the casino, other than being dark blue. Slightly more festive, for the brightly-hemmed nightlife of Miami.

“You don’t own a button-up or anything?” Hank says. He’s wearing a leather jacket so smooth it keeps slipping down his wrists. 

“I mean, I do—” George says, and Hank leans in and says, “Then put it on. Darryl’s going to stay in the car, so it’s just me and you tonight. See you in the car, handsome!”

Him owning a button-up is kind of bullshit, because the only one he packed is covered in black flowers and he has to cuff the sleeves up to his elbows. He leaves the first few buttons open, and against his better judgement, finds a cross necklace in Darryl’s suitcase. It comes with as much mockery as expected.

“Nowhere to fucking park,” Darryl huffs, squinting against the artificial light at the front of the street. The only space in front of them is illuminated in harsh pink from the nightclubs around them, which is barely enough to see the screeching groups tripping in front of their cars. 

“Can you find a parking lot or something?” Hank says. “Even if it’s employee parking—” his voice is abruptly cut off by George’s shrill ringtone, the one he’s assigned to his supervisor in the Art & Antiques unit. He huffs and watches the ID flash.

“Can you drop me off here?” George says. They both stare at him. 

“What, you don’t want us to hear?” Hank says. It’s a joking tone, he thinks, but George still feels his face flush with his implied superiority complex. 

“It’s not that,” he says. “It’s just—I don’t know what it’s going to be.”

“Okay, whatever,” Darryl says, after a beat. “Hank will come down the street once we park and meet you in front of the—whatever convenience store that is, with the boarded windows. Auntie Lucy’s? Weird name for the area, but okay.” 

“Maybe Auntie Lucy likes to party,” Hank says, and Darryl’s laugh is the last thing George hears before he picks up the phone and steps out of the car. Wallace’s voice is strained from the other end, and George knows that’s on him—he doesn’t like being left on a ringtone.

“Evening, Davidson,” he says. “Holding up well?”

“As well as I can be, sir,” he says. He doesn’t know if they suggested the FBI bug him, or if that’s something they came up with independently. It’s less the fact that they needed to do it—it’s more than he wishes they’d asked. The investigation team in Orlando isn’t as dirty as the entire department is, and he has to wonder what else they must already know if they think they have to be listening in. “I had… some difficulty convincing Alvarez and Baker that going undercover was necessary, but—it wasn’t an issue when I reminded them what I was here for.”

“Good, good,” Wallace says. “Are they giving you a lot of trouble? If you need the FBI—” 

“It’s fine,” George rushes to say. He props his phone up between his shoulder and his ear so he can find his cigarettes in the pocket of his coat. “Thank you. I just wanted to ask, um—do you have anyone named Saint Don on your radar?” 

“He’s not on the suspect list in Art & Antiques,” Wallace says. Just as George had suspected. He closes his eyes and flicks at the wheel of his lighter until his thumb goes numb. It takes him a few tries to light the cigarette, just enough to organize his thoughts.

“He owns a casino in Fort Pierce,” he says. “Directly across the street from the robbed gallery. One of his men—I was there, um, unofficially, and one of his men told me that the robbers don’t follow the art. Which could only lead me to believe they follow the murders. I’m not sure of their degree of involvement. Saint Don called himself the brute force.” 

There’s too much noise around George for him to hear the deafening static on Wallace’s end. “I’ll look into the name,” he says. “Thank you, detective. That’s—extremely helpful. I’ll update the Chief Detective in Art Theft. What are you looking into now?”

“I’m following the thread,” George says. “I don’t know how great of an idea updating Proctor is.” He can feel his confidence melt away. “Did you know they bugged me?”

Wallace doesn’t say anything, for a while. “No,” he says. “You’re certain?”

“Positive,” he says. “I found the chip of a transmitter in my tie. I crushed it on the first day, but—I don’t know how worried I should be. I wouldn’t want to sound paranoid, but why do you think they’d need to listen in?” 

“I don’t want you to think about that, George,” Wallace says. The use of his first name is as terrifying of an indicator as ever. “Let me handle it. Follow your thread, and I’ll keep you updated on whatever else I find out.”

“Cheers,” George says. Wallace hangs up, and he immediately calls Dream.

He doesn’t pick up, the first time, so George calls him two more times, ashing his cigarette with his thumb over his shoes. When Dream does finally pick up, it’s with a shout—“Jesus, George, _what_?” 

“Am I bothering you?” George asks. He can hear loud voices and muffled club music. 

“ _Kind of_ , yes,” he says. “What? Make it fast.”

“What clubs does Saint Don own in Miami?” George asks.

“Oh, fuck off,” Dream says. “What are you doing in Miami?” 

“Chasing the lead you so kindly introduced me to,” George says. He shifts his weight onto his opposing foot as he looks up, blowing smoke against the electrical wires above his head. “It’s kind of time sensitive.” 

“I—hold on,” Dream says. He muffles his audio, and when George hears his voice again it’s louder, the voices behind him reduced to a hiss. “Fuck, I don’t—where are you?”

“The South Beach,” George says.

“Well, obviously,” Dream says. “But—I need to know where.” 

“What?” George says. “No. I’m with—some of the detectives. From the department. I’m not alone.”

“You’re never going to make it in there without me,” Dream says. “I’m not telling you the names of any of the clubs if you don’t tell me where you are.” 

“I can ask around,” George says, and almost hangs up until he hears Dream’s voice screech again.

“ _No_ !” He says loudly. “No, you’ll—it’s not as easy as asking _can I talk to Saint Don_ , Jesus Christ, you’ll get the shit beat out of you. Just—try the Glacier. Just don’t go to the Knockout. Okay? Pick one and stick to it.”

“Pleasure doing business with you,” George says, and hangs up. It’s a dice roll from there. There’s something very identical about such over-the-top nightlife, so he doubts there would’ve been any difference in experience if he and Hank choose the Knockout. It’s mostly been like that for him because he doesn’t drink. Hank doesn’t give him any shit for it.

“That’s smart,” he yells over the music. A Robyn song. “I wish I had that much self-control. Okay, well, we’ll split up, okay? I can head for the Glacier if you take the employee exit here!”

George gives him a thumbs-up before they lose each other in the crowd. He was never a firearms officer, so the gun pushed up against his side is a constant, painful reminder—it feels like it’s going to go off every time someone bumps him in the shoulder. 

Gun, handcuffs, radio, cigarettes—but no pills. He hadn’t taken his pills. They’re stuffed in a pair of socks in his suitcase, somewhere, under a heaping pile of clothing. He doesn’t know why he uses that thought to orient himself against the glazed eyes of Miami partygoers. 

At the bar, he catches sight of a head of wispy hair—and then he loses it again as it bobs within the crowd. He tries to follow J.G. until he realizes he’s being led down the hallway into the bathrooms, which are full of enough smoke to make his eyes water. He grabs J.G.’s shoulder before he can convince himself not to. 

He turns around, and his eyes start at George’s shoes. He’s not wearing his glasses and his face is pink like candy, not one inch of his skin left white. He smiles loosely, clapping a hand over George’s shoulder.

“Dream’s friend!” He says against his ear. George nods and pushes away from him, craning his neck to see down the hallway. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m supposed to meet Dream here,” he says, even though it’s not true. “What about you?”

“I’m just making the rounds for Saint Don,” he says. “Making sure everything is in working order. Listen—I wouldn’t get your hopes up about him meeting you here. He’s a bit preoccupied in the back, to tell you the truth.”

“Preoccupied?” George asks. He had sounded preoccupied—that much is true. “Doing what?” 

“I wouldn’t worry,” J.G. says. “He’ll be fine.” He pushes two fingers to his forehead and then salutes George before he leaves, and George is sprawling his way down the hallway immediately, fingers sticking against the suspiciously wet walls. 

J.G. must have assumed that he knew how things went, around these types of places. Which George does. But he also has a bit of an obligation to push through the blocked-off door at the end of the hallway. It’s locked, and he rattles the handle in frustration. 

“Who are you?” He hears behind him. When he turns around, he sees Arla—the girl from the first day in the police department. The catlike spine. The only reason he’s not bugged at the moment. He’d thank her, if she wasn’t looking at him with her eyes narrowed and sharp.

“Is Dream in there?” He tries instead. It doesn’t work as well as intended in lowering her defenses.

“Yeah,” she says. “They’re in the middle of something.” She pauses. “You’re that fucking cop, aren’t you?”

“Is that a bad thing?” George says. She rolls her eyes and tugs a key from the arm of her jacket instead of answering. It’s too big on her.

“It’s a fantastic thing,” she says under her breath, and then pushes through the door. He follows her before he can convince himself not to, and when she closes the door the rest of the nightclub quiets considerably, the walls softening the blow of music. 

He expects—a lounge, to be honest. It wouldn’t have been out-of-sorts to expect Saint Don to create one in every nightclub he watches over. Instead, George sees Dream backed up against a wall covered by a dirty white sheet, a gun pressed to the underside of his chin. He’s smiling like a sick man on his deathbed.

“I didn’t think—” he starts, and the man holding the gun to his head shifts it closer, making Dream mewl out and squeeze his eyes shut firmly. “ _OhGodOhGod_ okay. Sorry. Jesus. _Sorry_.”

“You really don’t, do you?” The man says roughly. “You don’t ever _think_.” He cranes his neck to look at George. “Who’s the dude, baby girl?” 

“Some friend of his,” Arla says, voice dripping with a surprising amount of contempt. Dream’s eyes lock to him, and he opens his mouth to say something else, but then the gun digs into his skin again. George can feel his own echoing the same motion into his side. “Wanted to enjoy the show.”

“George—” Dream says. 

“Shut _up_ ,” the man says. “That was the last time we were asking you, Dream. Final fucking warning. If it wasn’t real money, you were a dead man walking.”

“I can get it tomorrow, I swear,” Dream says. “I know I said—I know what I said, but please, I know I can get it this time. Really. Fuck.”

Arla moves closer. George watches her shift like a chess match, moving only when the man shuffles his arm to pin Dream in an even more uncomfortable angle. From the sleeve she didn’t slide the key down from, he can see the protruding of a thin metal pipe.

Before he can yell at her to not be a fucking idiot and get the man to set off the gun, she slips it into her palm and hits the man over the head, the crack of metal against his skull reverberating through the room. He falls to the ground in a thick heap of bricks, his gun flying to the side. Arla kicks it away in disgust.

“Oh, thank fuck,” Dream breathes. “Thanks, Arla.” 

“ _Fuck_ you!” Arla says loudly, and raises the pipe again as if in warning. When Dream flinches away from her arm, she turns around and flings it at the wall, kicking firmly against the man’s side so she can get a good position. They look down at his body together, and she slams her foot against his face. Once, then again, for good measure. George watches the bones of his nose snap through the black blood. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Clay, seriously? How many times am I going to have to do that for you until you learn to stop messing with these stupid fucking pimps? Jesus fuck!” 

She stomps away from him, scratching her hands down her face, and pauses before exiting the door. George is right where she’d left him, standing slack-jawed as he stares at the imprint of her shoe on the man’s face. There’s dirt in the places his teeth lift from his gums.

“What the fuck are you looking at, cop?” She snarls. “You want to be next or what? If I’ve got one piece of advice for you and the bug you had hidden in your suit—stay far, far away from whatever fucking advice _this_ moron gives you.” She spits on the ground. “Far, far away.”

She shoves through the door again. George listens to the way the man’s vocal cords fry out, making his breaths hoarse and labored.

“Is he going to die?” He asks.

“I don’t think so,” Dream says. “She’s never killed them before.” 

Where to fucking begin. “She does that for you a lot?” George says, and moves closer, crouching down to his knees so he can see the damage even closer. He grimaces and pushes the man onto his back, sliding his eyelids down. “We should—”

“It’s fine,” Dream says. “Don’t—we don’t have to call anyone. I just need to tell J.G., I think.” He pauses. “I told you not to come. You shouldn’t be here.”

“ _You_ shouldn’t have had a gun to your head, you fucking idiot,” George says, and Dream coughs out a pitiful sob. 

“Don’t start,” he says. “Don’t fucking start, _please_ , don’t fucking start. I’m already going to get it from Arla. Just—what are you doing here?”

“Snooping,” George says. “But under Baker’s permission, this time. If you know anything—”

“About what?” Dream says, and raises his arms. “Obviously know a little bit too much about certain things, don’t I? So you’re going to have to narrow it down.” They look back down at the man again. “God, I—owe her so much. Really. I’m such an asshole.”

“Is she your girlfriend?” George says. 

His hesitation should be a greater indicator than his words. “No,” he says. “Not really. She’s just—that’s what we’ve been telling people, for a long time. To explain why she came back to Orlando with me.” His eyes dart to meet George’s and then away. “I can’t really say anything else.”

“Despite what she said at the door, Dream,” George says, “I’m not actually your friend. In case you’ve forgotten.” 

“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” Dream says. George wonders if he’s imagining the tension in his shoulders, the one rising to the surface of his face. “You’re not—”

“I’m not what?” George says. “A cop?”

“You keep saying that,” Dream says. “You keep saying you could arrest me at any time, that you have all of this control over me, but—what?” He waves a hand around the room. “Would you even have been here to find the missing painting if it weren’t for me?” He turns, and looks down. The underside of his chin pinks over with the circle of the gun. 

George imagines cuffing his hands behind his back. Bringing him into a Miami cop-car that would’ve usually been reserved for a drunk uni student. The drive back to Orlando. The face he’d make in front of Baker. The thumb prints. The files. The interrogation. The testimony. “The missing painting is here?”

“Not _here_ , you fucking idiot,” Dream says. “But you know where it is.” 

_So do you_ , George wants to say. _You keep appearing where you shouldn’t be, whenever I get so close I can taste it. And then you stop me. There’s no other explanation. There’s nothing else I can think of._

“I don’t know,” he says, and steps away. “I don’t fucking know. God. I’m never going to know, am I?”

“ _George_ ,” Dream hisses. “Think, man.” He grabs the small of George’s wrists in his hands, squeezing his fingernails against his veins. “If they don’t follow the art—if they follow the murders—you’ll know where to go.” 

“No,” George says. He can feel his head rushing past possibilities faster than he can consider them: the dead security guard. Dream’s stolen car. The pickup truck in the museum. What J.G. and Saint Don knew. “If they didn’t—there’s murders every day.”

“They’re not always like _this_ ,” Dream says. 

“What do you mean, like _this_?”

Dream’s eyes search his face. “We should get something to eat,” he says. 

**

It’s a uniquely American experience, to sit in the booth of a diner. George has always had a fascination with the ability to have a burger and milkshake at twelve in the morning without much judgement. Dream orders him coffee and orders himself sweet potato fries.

“Why’d you start gambling with him at all?” George asks.

Dream shrugs loosely. He runs a spare coin across the rim of the dirty table, sticky with lemonade. George’s phone is still humming with notifications from Hank, but he’s too tense to answer them without telling him everything he knows—he’s relying on Darryl to relay him the message of _got a lead, will keep you updated_. 

“Needed money,” He mumbles. “Now you tell me yours.” 

“Tell you my what?” George asks. 

“Your problems,” Dream says. “Your pills.” 

It’s freeing, not having to tell Dream to lower his voice. George sorts through the reasons he’s made up and the stories he’s identified as the genuine source. 

“It helps,” He says, finally settling on an explanation. “It’s hard otherwise. Loud.” 

“It’s quiet now,” Dream says. Behind the bar, a waitress is cleaning a plate over and over again, eyes shifting to an electronic clock on the wall. George can hear the hiss of the water running from her tap, the slide of cloth against glass. Dream’s teeth work against his sweet potato fry. His fingers rub against the vinyl table. 

“For you,” George says. “It’s always loud, once you start noticing things. Everything makes noise.”

Dream doesn’t say anything. “There’s a reason the department lets Saint Don pay them off. He’s more trouble than he’s worth.” He bites at the skin around his fingers. “I think the team knows that, too. They gravitate towards people who are bigger than them.”

People who are bigger than them—people who haven’t been invisible in a long time. Not like they are. George leans his chin against his palm. “The team?”

“That’s what Don called them,” Dream says. He looks around again, but there’s nobody to watch them have their conversation. Across the diner, there’s a young couple with a child who seem to have been on a road trip. “He just called them the team. He didn’t say what they needed the Backus for, or if they’d committed the murder, or—anything. Said they needed a getaway car and they’d split the money they made with him. Not evenly, but 60/40 is good enough for him. He’s a saint, after all.” 

“The getaway car was yours, wasn’t it?” George asks. “They used it to steal the painting, and then they left the security guard inside with the cocaine so they’d only use it in their murder investigation.” Dream turns his face away. “Dream. Come on. Look at me when I’m talking to you.” 

It works. Dream’s eyes dart back to his a second later, and his face floods with color. George can feel his skin prickling against the silence between them. “Your truck. That’s what they used.” 

“...I didn’t know that’s what it was for,” he says belatedly. “He said it would get rid of the ten-thousand I already owed, and I—I mean, that just makes it easy, doesn’t it? When he says it like that.” He leans forward to gulp down his soda. “I didn’t know about the cocaine. Honestly. I don’t do that hard shit.” 

George raises his eyebrows.

“Sorry,” Dream says.

“No, it’s not—” George says, huffing a sigh through his teeth. “Whatever. What else? Is that all you know?”

“That’s all I know,” Dream says. “Really.” He leans against the booth with his soda, playing with the fingers on his free hand. 

“And Arla?” George asks. “What does she know?”

“That’s a question for her, I’d think,” Dream says. 

“You said she came with you,” George says. “To Orlando.” Dream fidgets uncomfortably. “Jesus, you’re a shitty liar.”

“It’s not that,” Dream says. “It’s just—okay. I don’t know her deal. Back there, with that guy who worked for Don? I told her he was looking for me, and she said she’d handle it and an hour later her tongue was in his mouth long enough that he didn’t notice when she knocked him out. It’s always been like that. I have problems, and she cleans them up.”

“It seems like it,” George says. “She—I saw her in the police department. She left before you. She was complimenting my suit, which is basically the only reason I saw the audio bug on my tie.”

“Sounds like her,” Dream says. “She knows a lot. I think she’s—I don’t want to say things that aren’t true, man, but it would make sense if she knew something I didn't. We met in Los Angeles.”

“What the fuck were you doing in Los Angeles?” George says, but it doesn’t surprise him. 

“California’s far away,” Dream says, as an explanation. “But my mom missed me, so I came back. I owed money to new people, different people, and Arla was—I don’t know. Just there. She said she had a stop in Orlando and I never found out why.”

“A stop in Orlando,” George repeats.

“Whatever you’re thinking—” Dream says, but George stops him.

“Where is she?” He asks. “I need to talk to her.”

“At two in the fucking morning? She’s probably in bed,” Dream says, pushing at George’s elbow as he moves to get out of his booth. “How are you surprised about the entire world being so fucking loud? Just stop moving. You know how kids learn to cry themselves to sleep? Jesus. Give it a minute. Drink your coffee.”

George drinks his coffee. They don’t say anything, not for a long time.


	5. BLOOD MONEY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There’s this saying in German. Mitgefangen, mitgehangen. Caught together, hanged together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a note that there's some text exchanges in this so the formatting might be weird on mobile!! 
> 
> also since theres some scenes of a club i cant NOT mention that i was writing to bad romance and just dance by lady gaga + cannibal and take it off by kesha cuz obviously 
> 
> very fun chapter to write i hope u enjoy <3

George sets his alarm early the next morning, early enough that he’ll be able to regroup with Hank and Darryl without pissing them off even further. They’d stayed up for him, and then they’d fallen asleep the minute he’d finished explaining what he’d heard. They didn’t even ask where he’d found out that some girl they’d arrested once weeks ago was a notable suspect. 

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow, man,” Darryl had told him. Hank hadn’t said anything. That was almost too much for George to handle. He wakes up with a bitter taste in his mouth and then looks across the room to see Dream sitting on the armchair across from his bed. Without thinking, his hand scrambles for his nightstand for his gun, but if it were different circumstances—it would already be too late.

“Don’t bother,” Dream says dismissively. “I unloaded it before you woke up.” 

“Fucking hell,” George mutters, sitting up in his bed and feeling the bedsheet snap under his back. He’d pulled off his shirt sometime before falling asleep, so all he’s wearing is his sweatpants. “What the fuck are you doing here? You didn’t spend the night, did you?”

“No,” Dream says. “Spoken and accounted for, remember?” 

“No you’re not,” George says. 

“No, I’m not,” Dream agrees. He’s still dressed in what he’d worn the last time George had seen him, which is to say he’s visibly sweaty. He pushes at George’s open suitcase with a foot absentmindedly. “That’s not to say Arla and I were never together.”

“Great,” George says. 

Dream leans forward and starts palming through George’s suitcase with more vitality. George watches him warily. “We hooked up a few times in California, and—I mean—you know how much easier it is for people to believe you when you pretend you’re all lovestruck?” He says. He throws a pair of George’s socks across the room. “I could’ve done anything to anyone, man. We used to lie and say we were newlyweds to get upped to first class.”

“What do you _want_ , Dream?” George asks. He’s still not very used to people he doesn’t know appearing in his room to talk—at an extraordinarily high volume for nine in the morning—about their kind-of-ex-girlfriends. Partners-in-crime. Whatever.

“Skipping the pleasantries, I see,” Dream says. “I need a favor.”

Of course. 

“It couldn’t wait until I was out of bed?” George mumbles.

“And I lose you to Miami for an entire day? I don’t think so,” Dream says. “Maybe you should’ve thought about me waking you up before you gave me the key to your motel room.” 

“I didn’t—” George starts, and Dream raises his hand. The bright metal of the keys in his hand flashes with the sunlight. George grunts and throws his forearm over his eyes as he burrows back into the bed. “Oh, fuck off. I thought I lost those.” 

“You were in a _rush_ , George,” Dream says, as if that’s enough of an explanation. He stands up, planting a foot into the messy laundry at the bottom of George’s suitcase. “I’m basically doing you a favor, which is why I deserve one in return. Listen, those two fucking cops are awake— _them_ , by the way? You know how many times I’ve been in the back of Noveschosch’s car? I haven’t heard him swear _once_. The dude’s freaky.” 

“They’re good people,” George says. _Wouldn’t stomp a bloke’s face in. Wouldn’t look at me like that._ “Wouldn’t steal my motel keys.”

“It’s not stealing if I’m giving them back,” Dream says. “Listen. I think we can agree I’m the only reason you haven’t been shipped back off to Her Majesty’s yet. And I don’t know about you, but I’m a tit-for-tat kinda guy.”

“You offered your help to me, first of all,” George says. He walks over to his suitcase, and finds a shirt that doesn’t have Dream’s dirty shoe-print on it. “I’m not doing anything illegal.”

“Misdemeanors are basically legal,” Dream says. Before George can say anything else, he continues: “Word’s kind of—gotten around that I’m, um, a teensy bit late on some debts. It’s not that I don’t have the money, it’s just that it’s, like—I’m a procrastinator, you know? Is that a crime? Lock me up and throw away the key, then, right?” When George doesn’t laugh, he just sighs heavily. “I need you to come to a club with me tonight so I can flash your badge.”

“ _Dream_ ,” George says. 

“Not in a narc way,” Dream rushes to assure. “Just—okay, the Pink Panther’s kind of new in the running, and they’ve always tried to stay super cushy with police, so—best of both worlds, I think.” He must think back on what he’d said. “I should probably mention that I owe them a grand.” 

“They haven’t memorized your name yet?” George asks. He worries himself, sometimes, with how easy it is to convince himself to do things he doesn’t want to do. He doesn’t know where the line blurs. 

“New in the running,” Dream repeats. He’s unbuttoned the flannel he’s been in since yesterday night, revealing a white shirt and a heavy chain necklace. He rubs at his elbows with his opposing palms, and that’s when George sees it—the worried crease between his eyebrows. The puffy bags under his eyes. “You’re free to say no, man, but I’m also free to march down to Detective Noveschosch and tell him _all_ about your—”

Without thinking, George reaches forward and snaps Dream closer by the chain around his neck. He launches forward with a huff, head lolling like a bobblehead.

“I’ll go to your stupid fucking club,” he says. Dream gulps, and George feels his Adam’s apple throb. His heartbeat fits in George’s fingers. “But if I find out you warned your girlfriend that I’m on my way to talk to her, Saint Don’s not going to get to you. I’ll kill you myself.” 

He lets go. Dream blinks at him, opening his mouth to say something before closing it to shake his head vigorously.

“I’ll be here at eleven,” he says. 

** 

Then comes the effort of explaining why one of them has to return to Orlando. Hank empties a sugar packet into his coffee and doesn’t look up at him as he tries to explain why Arla could already be on her way back—why she’s a flight risk, might have headed to a new museum hotspot already, that if they start monitoring high-profile murders, they need to start monitoring flights just as seriously—and lets Darryl talk to him instead.

“She didn’t really—raise any red flags the last time I talked to her,” he says. 

“What did you bring her in for?” George asks.

Darryl pulls his sunglasses off of his face so that they push back a handful of his hair. They’re sitting underneath an umbrella tacked into the center of a picnic table, wedged directly in front of the motel complex. Two girls are tanning on lawn chairs in the only patch of sun on the cement.

“We asked her to come down to the station to ask her some questions about her boyfriend’s car,” he says. “Clay’s. You know, Baker’s kid.” 

“I know Clay,” George says. The name feels odd in his mouth. 

“She was fine with answering, but then she just kind of—I think I hit a nerve or something,” Darryl says, shrugging faintly. “Said she wanted to leave. I had her write out her testimony and then she was on her way.”

“She’s a good person,” Hank says, unprompted. “She used to be a waitress at the Water Hole. Listen, George—I don’t want to accuse you of anything, but I have no fucking clue where you could get this information from unless you did something last night that we didn’t agree you’d do.”

_And there it is_ , George thinks. He looks down at the panelling on the picnic table and messes at his hair. He can feel sweat dripping through his scalp. “Like I told you. I was at the Knockout, and I found her and one of Saint Don’s guys at the bar.” He doesn’t wait for them to say anything else. “He recognized me first.” 

“From the casino,” Hank says dryly. “I hate sounding like Alvarez, but you can’t just come into our department and—expect us to agree with everything you do. I don’t know how you do it back home—”

“I was there off-duty,” George says. He’s nowhere close to losing his temper—it’s more shame than anything, something like the red-hot shame of being brought up to the front of the classroom to admit a transgression. He can never explain what he was thinking at the time. “I just—wanted to see what it was like. I didn’t gamble, I didn’t fuck with anyone. One of Saint Don’s men started talking to me, and it’s easy to loosen them up when they don’t know who you are. People like talking about themselves, you know?” 

He’ll stick by his own defense, but agreeing to helping Dream scare off some fucking godfather—he doesn’t know what’s happened to his self-control. Rather: he knows what the problem is. He always has to quit something. He taps his cigarette into the ashtray uncomfortably.

“You mean that?” Hank asks, finally. He looks at George, this time, straight in the eyes. George knows how important it must be in a field where you always have to trust the people around you—but his highest possible degree of honesty is so, so fucking corrupted. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Sorry if it looked like I was being secretive. I’m just not used to—I’m never sure if it’s something you lot will want to hear.”

“I just don’t think we’re used to people bothering with Saint Don,” Darryl says, perking up. It’s comforting to see him drop the problem—forgive and forget—but Hank seems slightly more guarded on that front. “At this point, he pays off Baker like it’s a monthly rent to keep the casino running. And we all deal with it because the department’s close to collapsing at any point in time.”

“He doesn’t need our dirty laundry,” Hank murmurs.

“I know what that’s like,” George says. He tries to get Hank to look at him again, but he’s ripping up a receipt that he’d found blowing around in the hot wind. “I work in Art & Antiques, dude.”

Hank smiles, then. It feels like enough. Especially because—even when it hurts to admit—George wouldn’t trust himself either. There’s a beautiful irony in how the only person who he knows who’s told him the entire truth, lately, is the same person who eats sweet potato fries off of the floor. “I’ll stay with you. Darryl, if she already remembers you, it’ll be easier if you and Alyssa interrogate her together.”

“Not a bad idea,” Darryl says. “Then—if you can find anybody else who knows her in Saint Don’s clubs, we could rack up the character witnesses. People who could tell you about where she’s moved from and to, whether she’s been to England. Going to the Water Hole later might be helpful too.” 

“That sounds good to me,” George says. “And I’ll keep you updated, Hank. I swear.”

“I appreciate that, man,” Hank says. Some of the tension has left his face. “Seriously.”

George doesn’t know how the fuck he’s going to get out of this. 

** 

“You can’t dress down all of your work clothes,” George says, when they meet in front of the motel. Past the picnic tables and the tanning chairs, there’s a dead garden surrounded by a cheap, tetanus-infested railing. The entire complex reminds George of the backyard of a trailer park. Like the allure is purely in the individual rooms. 

Hank runs his hands along his suit jacket. “What, it doesn’t look good?” He asks. At this point, George thinks he would throw a party if he saw Hank in anything other than the fucking black suit. “Not all of us own four different variations of the same piece of black fabric.” 

“That doesn’t hurt as much as you think it does,” George says. He knows it’s not exactly his highest priority, when most of the night-time prowlers of the South Beach wouldn’t notice if had his dick out or if he was in Armani, but it’s the principle of the thing. “It looks fine. Let’s go. I’m not driving.” 

It’s generally a bad idea to text people who are in trouble with the law, because George can guarantee that he’ll one day see his messages up on a monitor in a courtroom as Dream turns against him on the witness stand. Even so, it’s the only thing he can do when he and Hank get into the car. He can’t exactly call.

_can we reschedule for tn?_

The response is immediate.

_What_

_No_

_I have work_

_You think I’m not fucking busy I have to make time to pay off this fucking debt too_

_Which isn’t just a me thing btw_

_You also have a debt to repay_

_Except its to me_

_It feels nice to have someone in my debt and not the other way around ngl_

_Anyway its at the pink panther I’ll send you the address_

George puts his phone back into his pocket, but he peeks at it again when Hank gives him a look at the insistent buzzing. 

_George this isn’t something either of us get to decide_

_We do things for each other now_

_Because u need me_

_I have to be at one of St Don’s tonight_

_depending on how the night goes I might be able to make it_

_don’t get your hopes up_

_You’re going to regret this_

Like he doesn’t already. “There,” George says. He points at the Glacier, whose flashing neon sign bears a broken cliff of ice. A long line of people idle in bodycon dresses and skinny jeans. George looks down the line at the bouncer, who doesn’t show any indication of it being a slow night. 

Even so, when he does get patted down the man’s hands barely skirt at his sides, pulling the ankles of his jeans up briefly to feel for weapons. George’s heart still pounds against his throat, even though the pancake holster against his ribs is secured with an extra layer of duct-tape. It’s a bitch to pull off, but Hank told him that if he wore a loose fitting shirt and they stayed calm, it would be like walking into the club unarmed. So he does just that. He’s seen people sneak worse in phone cases and contact lenses. 

Hank knows where to go, once they’re allowed inside. Cheap fluorescent lights dangle down from the ceiling like icicles, and the air is icy-hot, cold for only a second before it’s warm. He’d been talking to a bartender yesterday night, apparently, one who was a little too excited to talk shit about her boss to the only person who would listen. If she’s on shift, they don’t find her.

“This place is a free-for-all,” Hank says, into his ear. When he moves his mouth closer to George’s ear he can see the flash of blue breath mint on his tongue, but when he turns again a girl next to them licks a strip of white paper, and next to her the linoleum cracks under the pressure of their combined feet. 

Hank is the only exception; George doesn’t count as an exception. There’s not enough space left in him for guilt because it’s too taken up by the insistent paranoia. Whenever he goes to clubs he thinks about rat kings—the way rats’ tails will get covered in adhesive and they’ll stick together and die at the same time, from infection or starvation or just the constant closeness. The suffocation. “Tell me about it. Do you want me to take an exit?” 

“You can stay here,” Hank says. “I’ll go look around.” 

“Wouldn’t it be easier for you to stay?” George asks. Mostly he’d like to call Dream. Or maybe smoke a cigarette in the bathroom. “You know what she looks like—she might come back while you’re gone.”

“You’ll know what she looks like,” Hank says dismissively. “Red hair and has a tattoo of a flower on her arm. Just keep her preoccupied long enough and call me or something. I have my phone on.”

George can feel his face warming again. “Why does it feel like I’m in time-out?” 

“That’s not what this is,” Hank says. What George hears is, _I don’t trust you_. “I just—I know this place better than you do, for one. I’ll be back soon. Stay here.” 

George ambles around the bar like a hawk waiting for a free seat. He catches sight of two girls who had been sitting on each other’s laps hopping out of their spot, and he rushes for it, sliding against the bar before he can convince himself to follow Hank. He’s very close to it. He pretends to be very preoccupied looking through his wallet and feels a hand on his shoulder.

His first thought is that it’s a bouncer—the hand feels bigger than his—so he clutches fingers around the emergency fifty in his wallet and readies an apologetic look, but when he turns he sees _Dream_ , grinning at him as his eyes track the people behind him.

“Found you,” He says. George wonders how foul his smile must taste. He thinks about the message pinging his phone— _you’re going to regret this_. Dream is not dangerous as much as he is a magnet for people who are. “Can I buy you a drink, detective?”

“I don’t drink,” George says. 

“Me neither,” Dream says. 

He leans in closer to say something else, but George steadies himself by grabbing hold of the back of his neck. “You need to leave,” he says into his ear, and Dream cringes at the volume of his voice. “If my partner sees you—” 

“What’s he going to do?” Dream says. “Am I not allowed to be here or something? Come with me.” 

Dream tries to yank him away, but George stays firmly rooted in his chair. “I’m waiting for someone.”

“Who?” Dream says. 

“The bartender,” George says. “If I can get Hank talking to her, I’ll—figure something out. They already don’t trust me, Dream, I’m not going to let you fuck this up for me.”

“Like _I_ did anything,” Dream says. When he pushes away, George’s fingers run along the fine strands of hair at the back of his neck. “Are you talking about Vica? The one with the red hair?”

“I must be,” George says.

“I know who she is,” Dream says persistently. He digs his fingers into George’s forearm. “Come on. She’s probably on her break. I’ll let you talk to the other detective, if that’s what you need to do, but you need to come with me.” 

When Dream drags him across the dance floor, his hand slides down George’s arm, fingers crushed around his palm like they’re just terrible at holding hands. He only lets go when he pushes through the main exit, flashing a tiny smile at the bouncer. The hot air pools around George until he’s standing near the dumpsters with his phone in his hands. 

“Cameron better let me back in,” Dream says under his breath. At the curve of the intersection, in front of the broken parking meters, a woman with red hair is talking to a group of people. They all laugh at something she’d said. “Oh, thank God.”

“You know the bouncer, too?” George asks.

Dream side-eyes him. “I know a lot of people here. Why do you think I told you to go to the Glacier instead of—basically anywhere else?” He blows air out of his mouth, face relaxing into another easy smile. “I know Cameron a little _better_ , though, if you catch my drift.” 

“Right,” George says. 

“Vica!” Dream calls. She turns around, and George immediately walks into a cloud of cotton-candy scented smoke. When she smiles, it leaves the gaps of her teeth like exhaust fumes through a drain. 

“Dreamie!” She squeals, and collapses her face into his chest in a hug. George looks at her friends, trying to tamp the suffocation in the back of his throat. Their faces all look the same and their tails are all stuck together. 

Before anyone else, he focuses on a girl with pink hair. Niki lowers a wine glass down from her face and looks down at the ground, backing up against the sidewalk. The night shift secretary. George has to ask Dream what the fuck everyone is doing in Miami. 

George looks at Dream as if to make sure what he’s seeing is real, but he’s too busy maneuvering Vica out of his grip. “I wanted to introduce you to my friend,” he says. “He’s visiting from England. Very exotic.”

_Shit shit shit shit_. “It’s nice to meet you,” George tells her, and Vica’s long eyelashes curl upwards as she sticks a hand out so he can shake it. “Mostly I just needed a light.”

“Oh, I don’t smoke cigarettes,” she says. The flower tattoo on her arm says _Young and Beautiful_ on it in script. “They taste like shit. Have you ever thought about switching? I bet it could do wonders for your mouth. You know how people get hairy tongues?”

“Um, I’ve… never thought about it, no,” George says, bewildered. He looks at Dream for an explanation, but he has a look on his face that says _she’s like this all the time_. He still would’ve appreciated a warning. 

“Why the fuck are you talking about hairy tongues?” A different boy says drowsily. “I got you, man.” George wrestles out a cigarette that he accepts a light for gratefully. He pinches it between his forefinger and middle finger when he lowers it down from his face, turning to the side so he can look at his phone without much interruption. No texts from Hank. 

“I didn’t know you were still in town, Dream,” the same boy says, as part of an ongoing conversation George is lost to. “You disappeared so quick last night!” 

“Oh, well—you know how it is,” Dream says. George’s eyes dart around him—the dumpster overflows with black garbage bags, the club flashes alongside a Lady Gaga song, the doors close against the stifling heat. He doesn’t know where Hank is. And when he turns around, he doesn’t know where Niki is. “Shit comes up. I just wanted to—” 

George reaches down and squeezes Dream’s wrist while he’s talking. He doesn’t know what it means. Before anyone else has time to notice, he slips between Vica and the wall she’d been leaning against and follows the bob of pink hair down the street.

Niki stops before they get too far away—a drunk man passed out on a nearby bench gives a hearty snore. She crosses her arms at him, resting the wine glass on an elbow. “I shouldn’t be talking to you,” she says tersely, and turns to walk back down the street. From what George can see, they’ve barely noticed who’s left. 

“I’m not going to say anything,” George blurts. “Just—hold on. I just have a question.” 

She definitely looks different. Instead of being clipped back, her hair falls in messy waves around her head, tousled with throughout the night. She’s wearing dark eyeliner and a tennis skirt and a hoodie that’s too big to belong to her. It reads _Sussex_. “What?”

“Arla,” George says. He studies the way Niki’s face buzzes to a halt. “Do you know her?”

“So many names,” she says. She takes a nervous sip of her red wine. “So many faces.”

“What you do outside of your job isn’t my business,” George says. There could always be more than one Arla. And—as much as he hates to admit it—the Arla he _does_ know might not even be the right suspect. She’s close to it—but nothing is ever set in stone until the final court date. And he’s inching towards that date quite desperately. “And—vice-versa, I think. It’s just—I’m here with Hank.”

“Detective Harris?” She asks, her face paling against the pink blush on her cheeks. 

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s—work-related. You should definitely leave before he comes here, but before that—just—if you know anything about her, I need you to tell me.” He isn’t completely attached to the rawness his voice takes on. “Please.”

She’s quiet for a moment. “You’re here with Dream,” she says. “He called you his friend.”

“He’s not really my friend,” George says.

“I know,” she says. “Are you sleeping with him?”

“What? Not that, either. Jesus.” He watches the man on the bench toss and turn onto his side. When he thinks back on it, he hadn’t ever seen Niki speak to Dream—they could’ve talked when he’d left the interrogation room, for all he knows. When she was supposed to call him a cab. “He… I really can’t talk about it.”

“I’d be careful, if I were you,” she says. “There’s this saying in German. _Mitgefangen, mitgehangen_. Caught together, hanged together.” She drinks her wine again. “Would it be asking too much of you to not bring this up at work on Monday?” 

“If you tell me what you know,” George says. 

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. “You think she’s the thief.”

“What makes you say that?” 

“It would make sense,” Niki says. “They thought Clay did it. He cannot do it alone. She was in the interrogation room before him, and left crying. What else would I think? They’ve always ran around each other like a moon and a planet.”

“Have they,” George says. _Think about her on the stand. Think about her in prison._

“They moved back here, together,” Niki says. She shifts all of her weight onto her opposing foot, mouth pouted open in dismay. “He told everyone they met while he was studying in California, and his mother—she was so happy. But he was only there for a few months—he told me. He was travelling, until then.” She runs her fingers underneath her eyes. “Gambling away his money and his phone and his clothes.” 

“Wait,” George says. “You know him?”

Her laugh is a wet, bitter noise—like it’s full of repressed tears. “ _Know_ him?” She asks. “I’m the only person that knows him. How do you think I got that job? We were friends when we were young. I was there for his mother when he left. And when she married Michael—he took a liking to me. Offered me a position while I studied.”

“I didn’t know,” George says, after a pause. It’s not like Dream would ever tell him anything like that. But then again—when has he ever wanted to know? “What was he doing travelling across America?” 

“Not just America,” Niki says. “They were in Spain. Greece.”

George’s blood runs cold. 

“With her, I assume,” Niki continues. “They’d track each other to the end of the world if it meant she could keep cleaning the mud off of his shoes.” She gives her head a slight shake, running her fingers through her hair. “I’m sorry, I—this stays between us, right? I’ll stay quiet if you do. You’ll stay quiet, right? I really need this job.”

“Yeah, I—I get it,” George says. He takes a step back. “I’m sorry I kept you here.”

“It’s okay,” she says. “Can you give this to Vica for me?” 

She gives him her wine glass. She steps back, looking at him a final time before pushing her head down and finishing her trek down the street. George watches her for a while before pulling out his phone. He calls Hank.

“Before you say anything,” he says, the minute Hank picks up, “I know I moved from the bar, and I’m sorry, but—I talked to one of Arla’s friends.”

“What?” He asks, valiantly keeping from yelling at George. “Where are you?”

“Outside,” George says. “When you leave from the entrance—there’s a turn into the back alley, with the dumpsters. Your bartender is here.”

“My—bartender,” Hank says with a scoff. George knows how to set the honeypot. “Okay, okay—good. I’ll come outside. Are you still talking to them?”

“I have to walk one of them back to their car now,” George says, eyes focusing on Dream. He’s running his hand through his hair, tongue prodding against his teeth as he smiles. “Don’t be surprised if I’m not there, he’s—drunk. I haven’t actually spoken to Vica yet. I’ll leave that to you.”

“Okay,” Hank says. “Okay. I’m coming.”

George walks back towards Dream as he listens to Hank make his way out of the loud club, arriving at the group again to hand Vica the wine glass and stub the cigarette out on the brick wall. “Come on,” he tells Dream, crushing the ashes with his foot. He slips his phone back into his pocket.

“What, now?” Dream asks.

“Yes, now,” George says, when he catches the way Vica and her friends’ voices lower. “You’re on a bit of a tight schedule, aren’t you?”

Dream’s eyes search his face. “Right,” he says. “Okay, great. Um—I’m gonna dip, everyone, but I’ll see you later, okay?”

They shout goodbyes at him even when George grabs his arm and drags him down the street again. Dream manhandles his way out of his grip, and then they’re just walking next to each other amidst crowds of loud drunk people. It’s not much different from every other situation he’s been in with Dream. Except.

“Why did you tell me to come here yesterday night?” George asks. “Was it because of Vica?”

“What? No,” Dream says. “I didn’t even know what you were looking for. I just—I know this place better than the rest of the shitholes you would’ve stumbled into. And it’s not the Knockout.” 

“Like any of these places are different from each other,” George says. He wants to ask, _do you think animals can tell their burrows apart, when they hibernate for the winter? Or is every patch of tunneled-out dirt the same?_ But he doesn’t want Dream to laugh at him. He’d understand—but he’d still laugh. 

From the corner of the turned street he can see the faint light of the Pink Panther. No clubs surrounding it. “Is that it?” He asks, pointing up at the street. 

“We have to take the back exit,” Dream tells him. George’s favorite—suspicious circumstances. “It’ll—it’s going to be fine. I’m just going to ask for another few days, because that’s when the thousand dollars is getting wired into my account, and you’ll be there, so it’s going to be fine.”

“Don’t talk to _me_ ,” George says. “I’m not the one getting intimidated by a casino called the Pink Panther.” 

He doesn’t understand the intimidation until he’s forced to stand by Dream’s side as they’re walked into the casino boss’s office. He can feel the pressure of the two bouncers breathing heavily at their backs; their breaths sound as labored as his, with the same hiss of tobacco. The boss—a woman their age with a cloud of wavy hair puffing up from her shoulders—waves them away easily.

“This won’t take long,” she says, and rattles at a cabinet in her desk. George closes his eyes for a moment at the rattle of bullets. Loud clubs are exhausting, but quiet casinos are death wishes. Dream gives a weak laugh and shoves his hands against the back of his neck.

“Right,” he says. “Lindsay, you know I appreciate all of the exceptions you’ve given me.” 

“Do I know that?” She asks. Her eyes finally catch onto George, unassuming as he picks at his nails. “Who’s this?”

“Friend,” Dream says curtly.

“Does the friend have a name?” She asks. George doesn’t realize what she’s insinuating until he watches the way one of her long fingers prods at the straw on her cocktail. It’s a very professional setting to lose a thousand dollars in.

“My name’s Clay,” George says, just to be an asshole.

“You’re such a fucking prick,” Dream says, under his breath. 

“Clay,” Lindsay repeats, ignoring him. “I like it. What can I do for you and Dream?”

“He wants you to give him a few more days to give you the money,” George says, and walks forward to drop a hand onto the desk. He doesn’t miss the way Lindsay’s eyes trail from his hand, to his arm, to his shoulder—and then land perfectly onto his mouth. “It’s meant to be wired into his account later, apparently. Dream’s quite bad with time and his money, as I’m sure you’ve gathered.”

“I love your accent,” she says, instead of answering. “Are you from London? I lived there for a semester when I was in college.”

“Yeah, but I live in Brighton,” George says, and then Dream says, “Monday morning. I’ll come here and give it to you—in cash. All of it. No funny shit.”

“No funny shit indeed,” she says, still looking at George. “Can I get you something to drink, Clay?” 

George looks at Dream when he answers. “A vodka tonic would be lovely,” he says. 

“A man after my own heart,” Lindsay says. 

“It’s just a grand,” Dream continues desperately. George wants to send him a look, something like, _I’ve got this for you, what the fuck are you doing_ , but he’s either completely ignoring the way Lindsay’s eyes harden or he genuinely thinks he’s making some kind of dent in her morale. “I’d give you five hundred tonight, but I know you’d want it all at once, so—”

“I know what you’re thinking, Dream,” she says. “The ink on the rental papers is still drying, so you think it’s easier to play me. I get it.” She ducks a hand back into her desk. Rattles around. Her fingernails sound like pills. “I always think people like you need to be scared into shape, don’t you agree, Clay?” 

She raises from her seat but without thinking, George slides a hand between the buttons of his shirt and feeds his handgun out of the holster. The weight is unfamiliar, hurts the inside of his fingers. Her mouth falls into a circle and George points at it, like she’s a bulls-eye. 

“He’ll give you the money on Monday morning,” George says. Calmly. _Caught together, hanged together_. As much as he doesn’t want to be remembered like this—by Dream’s side, out of all people—it’s a sacrifice too easy to make. “In cash. I’ll make sure of it.” There’s a tense silence. “Do we have a deal?” 

And then the silence passes. “Parker!” She barks, and one of the pieces of hired muscles tumbles out of the door, without a gun but with his fists at the ready. George lowers his gun back into his side before he can do anything, but that backfires because the man aims, launches, and punches him in the face. A car with an old exhaust would backfire less. 

“Move, you fucking idiot!” Dream yells at him, pushing at his back so that he’ll leave the door. His body pounds everything into the front of his face. The other man hired for security is nowhere to be found, and George looks up at the man and shoves him in the head with the butt of his gun. He stumbles backwards, and George panics—hitting him again and again and then turning on his heel, watching him groan, following Dream down the hallway and then out of the exit. 

If the man follows them, they lose him. If Lindsay followed them—they probably would’ve been in deeper shit. Dream stops by a park and artifical turf they’d walked past earlier, resting his elbows on his knees, panting so heavily that even George—whose nose is probably broken—stares at him.

“What the fuck was that?” George yells at him, against his own volition. it feels like there’s something inside of him, something hammering at the inside of his stomach, stinging him over and over and over. It’s two in the morning. Hank hasn’t called him yet—not once. The air smells like George’s blood. “Why wouldn’t you just let me do what I was—” 

“Did you hit him back?” Dream asks, against a gasp of his own breath. George touches his nose with his hands, and his nerves all explode at the surface, forcing him to shut his eyes against the pain. “Come on. Did you?”

“Yes!” George snaps at him. He flashes his knuckles at Dream in response. “You should’ve just let me flirt with her so she’d have let you off the hook—are you actually an idiot?”

“Why were you talking to her like that?” Dream asks. His voice is hoarse. The sentence is so unexpected that George just looks at him, trying to match the throb of his knuckles with his nose. Something in Dream’s eyes looks like a bomb about to go off. “Now she’s going to ask me about you on Monday. Are you fucking kidding me?”

“You care more about that than the fact that I pulled a gun on her?” George asks. He almost expects Dream to burst out laughing, but his face is set in stone. 

“I was waiting for you to do that from the beginning,” Dream says. “But I didn’t want you to fuck her in front of me. That would’ve been weird.”

“But me killing her wouldn’t have been weird,” George says. It’s so absurd it’s almost enough to calm him completely. “Great. Fucking great. Where did you park?”

“Across the street,” Dream says. He watches George groan again when he nudges his nose with his hand. “Fuck. I definitely won’t have bandages in that stupid car. It’s rented.” 

“Looks like you have to find a drugstore, then,” George says. “Let’s go.” 

Dream all but drags him into the backseat of the car, fishing for his car keys before piling him against the seats. He digs in the back for anything that can be improvised into a first-aid kit, but the only thing he finds is an old t-shirt with a tear down the middle.

“I could bring you back to my room,” he offers. Like George wants to spend a night in his hotel. He’s barely containing himself from making the drive back to Orlando. “I have bandages.”

“Just drive me to my motel,” George snaps. He ducks down, checking his phone for any messages from Hank. Still none. He swipes a droplet of blood away from the glass with his thumb. “I can figure it out from there.” 

“Okay,” Dream says, and leaves one of the doors open as he nestles himself next to George, wiping his hands at his sides and starting to touch at his nose gingerly. All of the bones are in the right places, but the blood flowing from his nostrils is thick and dark. The only thing he can think about is that it wouldn’t have hurt as much if he was on something. Anything. 

He shouldn’t have moved his gun away. He shouldn’t have gone with Dream in the first place—any of the times. 

“When were you going to tell me you’ve been to Spain?” George asks. 

Dream freezes. “What?”

“Spain,” George says. _Femme au repos de creux_ . _Gargallo_ . Dream folds the cloth over itself and wipes over his throat. “And Greece.” _Portrait of a Greek Priest. Kantounis_. The blue bruise under Dream’s chin is yellow now, round and pale like a crop circle. 

Dream pinches his nose and tilts his head back to stop the bleeding. “Did Niki tell you?” He asks, wiping the gravel away from George’s knuckles.

“Who else?” George says irritably, voice thick and nasally. “Oh, fuck, that hurts.” 

“Stop being a baby,” Dream says. George looks down at his hands. His knuckles aren’t bleeding anymore, but they’re not scabbing over either. Dream moves to start wrapping the free piece of cloth around them.

“I didn’t know you were so close,” George says. 

“You never asked,” Dream says. 

George tilts his head forwards again. He scrunches up his nose and sniffles, but it’s not bleeding—just sore. “I never knew to ask.” 

“I was having a hard few fucking years, okay?” Dream says, finally. “I was in—California, you know that, but—I don’t know why, but I thought if I left with Arla, everything would just fix itself. Okay? I was in Spain, Greece, Portugal. Thailand. Vietnam.” 

“What was that meant to fix, exactly?” George asks.

“Just—” Dream says, and pushes his hands into his hair like he’s going to tear at it in frustration. “Everything was fucked. My mom was getting remarried and I dropped out and I lost my job and—it was just so, so fucked. I didn’t think it was relevant to tell you about the lowest point of my life, to be honest. Not like I make you tell me about your Xanax addiction every two fucking seconds.” George’s breath catches in his throat. “...Sorry.”

“Aren’t you always,” George says. He doesn’t really know what else to do with the tension, so he speaks again. “You know how it looks. You know what my priority always is.”

“I know,” Dream says. “George, I’ve—I’ve known Niki for a long time.” 

“She told me,” George says. There’s something relaxing about imagining it. He’d like to think he’s quite ambivalent towards Dream, if not outwardly antagonistic, but thinking about him when he was younger—not bouncing all over the place like a flicked rubber band—is oddly calming. “Something about how—Baker got her her job, right?”

“Right,” Dream confirms. He sits back. “Yeah, we, um—I don’t know how old I was when we met. Eight, I think? So she must’ve been six or seven. She didn’t even speak English, when she first moved.” He brings his feet up, crossing them onto the seats. He tracks dirt onto the material. “But, I mean, you know how it is. I’m difficult. What did she tell you?” 

“That you traveled,” George says. He wants, desperately, to leave it at that. “And that you gambled away your money.”

“Of course I did,” Dream says. George sees himself somewhere in the way Dream says that like it’s obvious—which he supposes it should be. Like knowing you have a problem is supposed to make up for said problem. “Well, not— _all_ of it. California and Texas, I paid off. Portugal, too.” He seems to think back. “I’m legally dead in Las Vegas, so I don’t have that problem there. Don’t look at me like that. I make a lot of money, too.” 

George would ask him how much he still owes, but he hesitates. It’s less because it would be impolite and more because it would feel like jumping down a rabbithole he’s unequipped for. “How much?”

Dream busies himself with tearing up the collar of the shirt. “I get really lucky at slots,” he says. 

“Right,” George says. “Because gambling isn’t a complete scam manufactured to milk you for everything you’re worth. Did you like claw machines when you were little? Should I ask Niki?”

“If only I could think of something else that milks you of everything you’re worth,” Dream says. 

George sets his mouth in a thin line. He doesn’t feel like arguing. He’s fine with fighting, but arguing would require defending his position—and there’s nothing he can tell Dream that would make his head make sense. 

“Come on,” he says. Even if the drugs whittle him down, he doesn’t remember the last time he was completely there anyway. “How much do you really think I’m worth?” 

Dream opens his mouth to say something, but he closes it at the last second with a loose shrug. He licks his thumb and tries to wipe away the dried blood on the back of George’s hand. When it barely scrapes off, he raises George’s hand to his mouth, says, “Don’t be weird,” and wraps his mouth around his knuckle. He’s barely there a second, but it’s long enough. 

“Your blood tastes like mine,” he murmurs. George’s knuckles are clean. They itch where Dream’s mouth had been. 

_Don’t be weird_ his fucking ass.

“Same blood type,” George says. Dream warned him, in retrospect. He told him he was going to regret this.

“I guess,” Dream says. “I know you can’t trust me, ever, but I still want you to know, that, like—whoever this guy is—” he wraps a piece of the fabric around George’s hand, “It’s not going to kill you if you never find him.” 

“I guess,” George says. 

  
_It’s not going to kill me_ , he thinks, watching Dream tuck the edge of the makeshift bandage around his thumb, _but it’s going to kill you_.


	6. FALSE WITNESS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He’s always wanted a cop under his thumb. And you’re so fucking easy. You’ll do whatever it takes to find your little paintings, and he knows that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kind of a filler/plot heavy chapter but im very excited 4 the next one :))) 
> 
> i hope u enjoy!

George wakes up late, but it’s still earlier than Hank. He spends a good few minutes banging fists against the door of his motel room until Hank opens it, light refracting against a tiny wedge of his face. 

“Give me a minute,” he says—voice gravelly like a layer of beaten road—and closes the door again. George leans back on his heels as if physically pushed against the chest. 

He isn’t sure what he’d been expecting, after bailing on Hank for an entire evening, but it most certainly was not this. He twiddles his thumbs for ten more minutes, looks through emails he’s already answered, and debates calling Wallace. He hasn’t gotten any updates on what they know about Saint Don—or how important the FBI trying to listen into his conversations is. He taps his fingers along the edges of his phone. He feels like there would’ve been easier ways to go about bugging him; Lord knows he’s already filled his phone up with enough evidence. 

He tries to think back on who he’d talked to, that day. Wallace and his detectives, all older than him and with the same concern that he wanted to be in Orlando alone. A secretary. The intern that told him his rooming arrangements. Hank opens the door before he can slip too deeply into his brooding.

“Did you bring your key back?” Hank asks. 

“What?” George says. “Yes.” 

“You should get your suitcase, then,” Hank continues, voice tight.

“Oh,” George says. “I mean, it’s just in my room.” Hank blinks at him, passively. “I’ll… go get it, I guess.”

When he comes back to the front of Hank’s room with his suitcase, he watches a flash of tan skin exit his hotel room, carrying her heels in one hand and pulling on the oversized shirt she’s wearing. George freezes in his tracks and looks at the tattoo on her arm.  _ Young and Beautiful _ . 

Hank grabs her arm to stop her, so George busies himself with trekking to the car. The hood’s unlocked, so he yanks it open and starts manhandling his suitcase next to Hank’s. He slams the trunk shut again, but the noise does little to bring their attention to him. 

He looks at himself in the dark glass of the window while he waits. His nose still feels tender, and the red slash of bruise is turning a dark pink. He prods at it gingerly. When he’d gotten to his room he’d tried to find something cold to press against it, but the most he could find was lukewarm bottles of water. 

“Enjoying the view?” He hears Hank say from behind him. When he turns around, Vica is nowhere to be seen, and Hank avoids his eyes as he walks to the driver’s seat. George gives himself a moment to laugh at him before he’s following him into the shotgun seat.

“Don’t tell me you did what I think you did,” George says. Hank smells like licorice. He puts his hand on the back of George’s headrest as he backs out of their motel parking spot. 

“I may have,” he says, after a moment. “Vica was—helpful.”

“ _ Especially _ helpful,” George says. Hank shakes his head, huffing a laugh through his nose.

“It wasn’t like that,” he says. “I mean, we—we didn’t really—it didn’t get that… far. But I have. Her number. So.” 

“So what I’m hearing is that you want another night in Miami,” George says. Hank looks at him in the mirror like he’s gone insane, and George remembers who they’re supposed to be for a moment. Miami’s wrung him out to dry, certainly, and he knows he and Hank are both people meant for closed-off rooms with an AC on full crank, but there’s so many  _ people  _ here. And so many of them are linked by thin, invisible strings.

“Definitely not,” he says. “I think we’ve gotten enough. Darryl called me last night. The car warrant went through, and right now they’re processing samples from the steering wheel and some fibers they found on the inside of the seatbelt.”

“Nice,” George says. “D’you know how long it’ll take?”

“It won’t be more than a few days, I hope,” Hank says. “Alvarez said that she’s going to call Forensics once we’re back in Orlando. Alyssa’s been out questioning the group the security guard worked for. Paragon USA.”

“Haven’t heard of them,” George says. “What’s she found out so far?”

“Guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” Hank asks. “Vica told me some things.”

Like that isn’t intimidatingly ominous. Especially when paired with Hank’s prevailing silence. “About what?” George says. 

“She moved to Orlando to be with Clay,” Hank says. “Everyone knows that. But—the two of them—Vica’s known them a while, but not well. Friend-of-a-friend type thing. She said the two of them have been planning to leave for a while. Keep traveling.” He looks at George in the mirror. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but the timing seems too perfect.” 

“It does seem too perfect,” George breathes. He shouldn’t be surprised, in retrospect, that Dream doesn’t know how to keep his mouth shut—but he’d expected more, coming from Arla. She seems smarter in every regard. “So, what? We want him too?”

“It wouldn’t matter if we wanted anything from him,” Hank says. He sounds bitter. “We could bring him in for questioning, sure, but Baker would never let it get around that his son’s a suspect in a drug and homicide investigation.” 

“It never seemed to me like Baker cared,” George says. If anything, sometimes it seemed like Dream was compensating for something. Getting himself into deeper and deeper shit as if to test the limits of the Orlando police station, including his father’s reaches. “That first day—he was watching the interrogation.”

“So he could keep it quiet,” Hank says. “We can’t touch him. Even before I was in the department, the stuff I’d hear about him doing—typical teenage delinquent bullshit, but he knew nobody was going to stop him. Darryl fucking hates him.” 

George can empathize with that.

They get drive-through coffee on the way. George gets tea. It’s a wholly pleasant experience until they walk into the bullpen of Orlando’s Violent Crimes section. It’s buzzing with flocks of beat cops, all chattering insistently, splayed out against evidence or pushing through doors. Alyssa is explaining something vehement to a group of borrowed Narcotics experts from Special Enforcement. 

“What in the—'' Hank says, but a female cop rushes past his side with a stack of files and makes him twist in a sudden feat of whiplash. “Jesus! When Darryl said Alvarez wanted reinforcements, I thought it meant—the D.E.A. or something. Okay. Whatever. Let’s find the Baker.” 

George feels—very suddenly—out-of-place. He hovers his to-go cup over the head of a man who ducks against his side to get to the exit. The door to the lieutenant’s office is open, so Hank pushes inside easily. He doesn’t lock it behind him, so George follows. 

“Baker!” Hank says cheerily. Alvarez, who’s standing across from them next to Baker as she points something out on his document, looks up at them in surprise. Hank ignores her as he plants his hands against Baker’s desk to get his attention. “What. Is going  _ on _ .” 

“Harris,” Baker says, standing up. “Detective Davidson.”

“Nice bruise,” Alvarez says. 

“Thanks,” George says.

“I’m sorry about the commotion,” Baker continues smoothly. “And thank you for your tip about Ms. Lowery—I suppose it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that she’d peddle for—Don, but I can’t lie that I’m disappointed in the type of company that gravitates around my step-son. She’s in custody at the moment.”

“Custody?” George blurts. That was not the intention of sending them into Arla’s direction. He’d been expecting an interrogation—something that would let her explain why she’d dragged Dream around the continental United States and ended up in Orlando. Something about how it was Saint Don all along, that she’d been in the club because she was nothing but a messenger for him, that  _ he  _ was running the ring of art thefts that has plagued George’s life for the past year, but—it would’ve been too clean. Of course it would’ve been too clean. “Did she apply for habeas corpus?” 

“Yes,” Baker says. “We’re working on the grounds of drug trafficking and distribution.” He looks pained, and Alvarez crosses her arms at them. 

“We’re not holding her because of the homicide,” she says, as an explanation. The air is stale and tense and George looks over at Hank to see if he’s the only one between them that noticed, but Hank’s eyebrows are knitted together in a similar way. “It’s not because of your case either, George. Special Enforcement is going after Saint Don.”

“ _ What _ ?” Hank says, and looks over at Baker. 

“They haven’t before?” George asks. He knows the answer, but he wants it from Baker. 

“No,” Alvarez says. George is still looking at Baker, and Baker is looking back at him, but his mouth is a firm line and he looks less like he wants to answer and more like he knows exactly what George is thinking about. “They’ve been on the department’s radar for years, but we’ve never had enough probable cause to—issue a warrant for a search of the casino, for example. You mentioned you met a man at the Five-And-Dime who was with Arla. Pale, tall, skinny?” 

“Yeah,” George says. Baker is still looking at him. “J.G., I think.” 

“Right,” Alvarez says. “He does a lot of logistics for Saint Don. Hired his security detail. Was entirely willing to speak to Alyssa and Darryl about how involved he was in ensuring the safety of the casino—making a good impression on the police and all that. Paragon USA—does the name mean anything to you?”

“Holy shit,” Hank says. Alvarez nods at him, and only then can George can see the spiderwebs of brown-red in her eyes.

“Alyssa and Darryl can catch you up,” she tells Hank. “They’re in the break room. You might have to wake them up. George, can I speak with you for a second?” 

“Oh,” George says. “Sure.” Mostly he’d been planning to stay back and ask Baker a few more questions about what exactly they’d been gaining from Don all of these years, but if Alvarez is going to question  _ him  _ he’s going to have to shift his mental gears away from being an active combatant. Alvarez picks a lighter up from Baker’s desk and motions for George to follow her outside.

They make it all the way to the garage exit of the department, where Alvarez motions for him to stand next to a group of bushes until she unearths a pocket of cigarettes from her back pocket. George watches her light it in silence. She offers it to him in a gesture of goodwill, but he shakes his head.

“I don’t really smoke menthols,” he says. 

“They’re better for you,” she says.

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Of course it’s not true,” she says. “It makes you feel better, though, doesn’t it?” 

George supposes it does. He takes it from her hand and puts it to his mouth. It’s nicer to smoke, but he doesn’t like how cold the inside of his mouth feels. 

“What were you doing at the Five-And-Dime?” She asks, finally. Like that had been what this was leading up to. George blows smoke against his shoes and watches it part to the sides of his head before he hands the cigarette back to her.

“When I was in Fort Pierce, I asked Alyssa why nobody ever questioned the owners of the casino even though they were so close to the museum,” George says. “I didn’t really get a good answer. I just wanted to find out why.”

Alvarez takes a drag before she answers. “You were curious,” she says. “I can respect that. If you didn’t do anything illegal.”

George wants to tell her that it was less curiosity and more frustration. He certainly wouldn’t have gotten away with less back home, but it was more that he’d never had to do as  _ much  _ when investigating in England. Even when he was in Basic Command, he’d go undercover when authorized and he’d keep his partner informed—his unit was crooked, but it wasn’t dirty to the core. “I didn’t.”

“I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do,” she says, “Baker, he—I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, but he’s known Saint Don for a long time. He’s been cat-and-mouse with the Orlando P.D. ever since HIDTA left Fort Pierce. I’ll give you a wild guess as to how Don got away with that.” 

“Can’t pay them off,” George says. “Did he—hide?”

“Bingo,” Alvarez mumbles. She takes a deep breath into her cigarette. “He’s generous with giving people time to pay off their debt, I’ll give him that much.” George thinks about the gun against Dream’s neck. “That’s why they call him that. Saint. But that also means that when he  _ does  _ get his money, it piles up, and then he knows how to use it. Stay quiet and don’t get caught, right?”

“That makes sense,” George says. “So—what? You all just knew Baker was taking money from him and didn’t do anything about it?” He doesn’t mean for it to sound contentious, but he doesn’t know how else he’s meant to talk to Alvarez. If anything, he hopes she appreciates the matter-of-factness. 

“It’s not just Baker,” she tells him. “Special Enforcement finds it easier to lock up single moms caught with weed than to go after drug peddlers that ship out of Miami. Especially when they’re not central to Orlando and know who to pay off. But now that you’re here—” she takes a heavy puff, “They have no other choice.”

“Maybe I need that security detail more than fucking Saint Don,” George says. He’s not particularly worried, but he knows it’s going to make his life difficult now that the rest of the department knows  _ he’s  _ the asshole moving shit out of place. Not to mention when Saint Don finds out he’s being investigated.

“Maybe,” she says. That worries him a greater amount. If he’s shot in his sleep, he doesn’t know who’s going to feed his cat. Certainly not Karl, who’s been feeding her ham while she stays with him. 

“I was kidding,” he says. “So… what? Why are you telling me this?”

She pauses. “I wanted to thank you.”

“ _ Thank _ me?” George repeats. 

“It’s hard to get things done around here,” she says quietly. “I know everyone calls me a bitch, but I don’t know what else to do. I moved here thinking it would be a better department than Atlanta, and—the detectives are smart, driven—but they have nothing to work with. If they’d never sent you here, we’d still be chasing leads that get ripped away from us anyway.”

“I didn’t do anything,” George says. He can’t wrap his head around  _ Alvarez  _ thanking him for something. “You’re juggling fifty things at any given point in time  _ and  _ you do Baker’s job. You would’ve figured out a way around it even if I’d never come.”

“That’s the point,” Alvarez says. “I didn’t  _ have  _ to figure out a way around it. I owe you a drink. Or twenty. I know it’s not your investigation, but I need your help on questioning Lowery. We just got her out of holding and into the box, and I think you could be helpful.”

“Oh,” George says. Logically he knows that Arla might rat him out the minute he steps inside, but there’s also some things he’d like to ask her that he feels like she’ll be forced to answer if Alvarez is also standing there glaring daggers at her. Unless she asks for a lawyer. She might not say anything about him if she has a lawyer. “Sure. Earlier—Baker knows Arla?”

“Of course,” Alvarez says. She stubs the cigarette out under her shoe and then turns on her heel to enter the building again. “She’s Clay’s girlfriend. Or was. I don’t know. It’s definitely going to make Baker’s department party a lot more difficult than it usually is.” George speeds up to match her brisk pace. “I should probably mention he’s going to announce that soon.” 

“Department party,” George says. He didn’t think he’d stay in America  _ that  _ long. “I wouldn’t expect to be invited, if it’s for the department.”

“Oh, trust me, he’s going to want you there,” Alvarez says grimly. “It’s the yearly opportunity for him to show off whatever renovation he’s done to his McMansion. Doesn’t take no for an answer. Watch. He’s going to do it later today.”

“I’ll look out for that,” he says. When they reach the interrogation room, he peeks through the tinted window to see Arla sitting against the chair, face downcast and sullen. “Should I… are you going to do it alongside me, or…?”

“Just follow me,” Alvarez says hurriedly, swooping up her file before pushing through the door. George follows her, trying to take his time in a way that’s tired instead of suspicious. When he closes the door behind him gently, he watches Arla’s eyes flick to him. 

She doesn’t say anything.

The relief crashes against him like a wave. He almost has to give himself time to realign all of the useless panic as Alvarez weans her way onto the offensive.

“Arla,” she says, not unkindly. “I hope you haven’t been waiting for too long.”

“Three fucking hours,” she spits. “Three fucking hours in this piece-of-shit chair with these piece-of-shit people. Is this how you always run this place?” 

“You won’t have to stay for much longer if you cooperate with our questions,” Alvarez says, tapping a stack of papers into place. Arla sighs, deeply, digging her sneakers against the ground and sliding her back down her chair.

“If I just  _ cooperate _ ,” she says crisply. She rattles the handcuffs against her hands. “If I just cooperate, I won’t be cuffed like I’m some fucking dangerous serial killer, huh? Me not lunging over this table and stabbing you in your little pig throat is a sign of my constant and unyielding cooperation.”

“Great,” Alvarez says. “So it won’t be too difficult for you to tell me what you had to do for Saint Don.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says. 

“Your friends at the Five-And-Dime ratted you out,” Alvarez says softly. “You’ve been Saint Don’s link to the Orlando area for months. Since J.G. got promoted to his underboss and moved to Fort Pierce.”

“This pains me to say,” Arla says, “But I want a fucking lawyer.” 

Alvarez leans back from her seat. “That can be arranged.” She’s legally not allowed to say anything else, but she opens her mouth anyway, and at that moment George hears the rap of knuckles against the window. The door opens, and Baker shoves his head inside.

“Alvarez,” he says. “My office.” 

“Stay here,” she tells George, and leaves the room with a relative amount of grace, having been called into her boss’s office. George stands from where he’d been leaning against the window and turns to look at his own reflection, but then Arla speaks from behind him. 

“Get Dream here,” she says. Quietly.

“What?” George says, turning around. The paranoia prickles at his skin—anyone could be listening in, watching them, watching  _ him  _ talk to  _ her  _ and figuring out an entirely new way to make his search for the paintings a living hell. 

“You know him,” she says. “Tell him I’m being interrogated. He’ll get me out.” 

She says it so calmly, comprehensively, like it’s something that George is supposed to hear and absorb. He barely keeps from stumbling against his own feet trying to work out the words. “ _ Excuse  _ me?” 

“Oh, so you’re a member of the law-abiding class when it’s fucking convenient now? Go get Dream before I tell that hot cop everything I know about you,” she says.

“You don’t know anything about me,” George says.

“Don’t make me fucking laugh,” she hisses. “He’s always wanted a cop under his thumb. And you’re so fucking easy. You’ll do whatever it takes to find your little paintings, and he knows that. What’re you going to do when they bring J.G. in as a suspect and he rats you out immediately?” 

“You need to stop talking,” George says. The panic is inching into his voice. Before he’d left and he’d dropped his house-keys off at Karl’s apartment, he’d said,  _ don’t get yourself into any deep shit, okay?  _ and George had said,  _ I won’t. Of course I won’t. _

“They’re going to seize your investigation and charge you with police misconduct, fuckhead,” Arla says. “Ship you off to some British prison. Can’t be that bad there, though, can it? Or is the fish-and-chips not fresh enough behind bars?” George doesn’t say anything. “He can make sure people stay quiet about you. It’s good having friends on the inside, detective. I wouldn’t suggest you break your loyalties.”

Because that’s who George is now. He can feel Dream’s voice around him, inside his head, throughout his body, reminding him what he has to do, what he’s already done. 

“He can’t do anything to get you out,” George snaps at her. “Baker doesn’t listen to him.”

“That’s not how it works,” Arla says. “Just find him.”

George can almost imagine the smirk on her face when he turns on his heel and leaves. He slams the door loudly to remind her where she is, but he knows it doesn’t work. People like Arla are never pawns. He pushes through the herds of beat cops until he’s through the hallway, rushing to make his phone-call before anyone can notice he’s gone. 

He finds Alvarez’s smoke spot in record time. He means to open Dream’s unlabeled contact, but he’s stared at it on his phone long enough to have memorized it, so he types it out and then calls him. Dream doesn’t answer.

“Come on, come on, you fucking asshole,” he hisses, and calls him again. He still doesn’t answer—of course he doesn’t answer, because it’s the middle of the day and he’s three hours away in Miami, so he’s probably asleep. George tries three more times until he finally answers.

“ _ Ugh _ ,” Dream says, as a greeting. 

“You need to come here,” George says. He closes his eyes against the hot wind. “Arla’s in holding. They’re investigating Saint Don. She told me to tell you.”

“What?” Dream says. “They’re—” He sounds incredibly flustered in a way George hasn’t heard before. “I’ll be there soon. Three hours.”

George wants, desperately, to know what Arla is to him to the point where he’d drop everything to help her. “I don’t owe you anything, Dream.”

“Where did that come from?” Dream says. 

“I don’t have to help you anymore,” George says rigidly. He looks around him for other people, but the garage exit is secluded enough from onlookers to feel relatively safe. “I don’t care what she says, I don’t have any—fucking— _ loyalties _ to you. I don’t have to do anything to help you. Ever again. If I don’t want to.”

Dream still doesn’t say anything. George drops his voice to a harsh whisper.

“If you try and take me down,” he says, “I’m dragging you down with me. I don’t care what you  _ think _ you can do to me—I can go to jail, but someone’s always there to finish my job for me. To find out what  _ she _ has to do with the stolen art. To find out what you’re fucking hiding.” He skips a beat. “I don’t know if you can say the same.”

“I was never planning on taking you down,” Dream says, finally.

“I don’t care what you were planning,” George says. “This ends now. I’m sticking to my job, and you’re sticking—to—whatever it is you fucking do. Stay in Miami if you want. I’m not helping you anymore. This is the last time.” 

“I’m not your pills, George,” Dream says. 

“Yes you are,” George says. 

He doesn’t realize what he’s said until he hangs up. It’s true, in a twisted sort of way. He walks back to the bullpen before he does something stupid like scream. Or call Dream again. He blocks his number as he walks. 

He looks out at the sea of unfamiliar faces sprawled against the increasingly-familiar squadroom, but he doesn’t catch sight of Hank or Darryl or even Alvarez. He realizes, with a start, that they still must be gathered in Baker’s office. He forces himself inside before he can think of an excuse of why he left the interrogation room.

“George,” Baker says, catching sight of him immediately. He’s pacing around the tiny expanse of his office, and Darryl and Hank are sitting in matching uncomfortable positions. Alvarez looks especially irritable. “You, um… can I help you with anything?”

“I... still haven’t gotten updates about how questioning Paragon USA went,” George says, lamely. He’d be able to think of a better excuse if he didn’t feel his heart jumping out of his skin. 

“Right,” Baker says. “Um—Alyssa. Show George the field report.”

“He has a right to know,” Alyssa says. 

“Yes,” Baker says. “That’s why I—”

“No,” she interrupts forcefully. She’s sitting on an armchair in the corner of Baker’s office, picking at the leather skin of the arm. “About the agents. This isn’t his department, he’s a visiting specialist, but he has a right to know.”

“Right to know what?” George asks, looking at her, but she ducks her face away from him before she can respond. A foul taste rises to the back of his mouth—keeping secrets from the visiting specialist is the trick of the trade, but if it’s something Alyssa would speak up for, he might have a bit of a problem with being kept in the dark. 

“I just got a call from Lionel Proctor, the Chief Detective in the FBI’s Art Theft unit,” Baker says. 

Great. Great. Fucking great. George can feel the muscles in his hands tensing. Even when he moved up from Basic Command, it was with a certain type of reluctance; mostly he didn’t want to be the federal agent that every constable hated seeing in their stations. He can feel an identical kind of dread at the thought of the FBI intruding upon a department that’s already rotted brown and black like a spoiled fruit.

“What did he say,” George says faintly.

“They’re combining our local investigation with theirs to create a task force,” Baker tells him. “Your supervisor has apparently signed off on it as well.” 

“Wallace?” George says. “Shit. The bug.”

“The  _ what _ ?” Alvarez says sharply. 

George grimaces. He hadn’t meant for it to slip. 

“The—on the first day I was here—there was—a bug,” he says jerkily. He itches at the back of his hand and watches his nails dye fine red lines against his skin. “On my tie. An audio bug. I didn’t notice until it was pointed out to me. It was stuck inside, like—between the stitching.”

Alvarez stares at him. “They  _ bugged  _ you?” 

“I don’t know why,” George says. “But—that was weeks ago. I doubt they didn’t notice I’d found the bug early on. I don’t know why they’d want agents down here so late.”

“Hold up, hold up,” Darryl says. “They… put an  _ audio bug _ in your  _ tie _ ? And you  _ found it _ ? You have a phone right there!” 

“I really can’t explain it,” George says uselessly. He thinks about telling them that Arla was the one that saw it, but he doesn’t know what that would have to do with her interrogation. Maybe she just has good eyes. 

And maybe George is the fucking Queen. 

“If they… truly believe they have to keep an eye on our department to such an extreme degree, there’s nothing I can do to stop them,” Baker says. “The most I can do is—tell you all to be on your best behavior, of course. I wouldn’t want to make a bad impression.” 

The irony is not lost on George, but he doesn’t say anything. He waits for Alvarez to point something out, or even Alyssa, but they both avoid saying anything at all. George wants to close his eyes and never open them again. 

“I suppose it’s good you’re here, George,” Baker says, breaking the tension. “I meant to tell you. My fifteenth year with Violent Crimes is next week, and every year, I throw a bit of a get-together and invite the entire unit. You’re invited this year, of course.” 

_ Of course _ . Like it’s some sort of necessity. “Oh, wow,” George says, instead of looking at Hank and Darryl, who are now smirking at him as if hoping he’ll refuse. “That sounds great. I’m so flattered you’d invite me, I’ve been here for such a short time—but, um, thank you. I’ll definitely make it.” 

“I think it could do you some good to mingle,” Baker says encouragingly. “My wife makes an excellent chocolate souffle.” 

“I love Mrs. Baker’s souffle,” Hank says. Darryl hits the back of his head. 

George becomes Alyssa’s problem after that. She leads him to a corner of the room, where an electronic screen bears a few security stills of a man he can’t identify. “So I heard you’re the person I get to thank about leading me into J.G.’s direction,” she says. 

“I guess so,” George says. “I didn’t really do much. I wasn’t really authorized.”

“I can tell by the—all of that,” she says, waving a hand around her face. She clicks something on the computer screen open against the table, and the picture slides to another security still George doesn’t recognize. “But, I mean, even so—you may as well do everything you can until Art Theft comes in to leash us all back in. Especially the fucking Baker. The thought of federal agents in his precious little fifteen-year department is a bit too much for him. You recognize this guy?” 

“Not at all,” George says, squinting at the screen. “Who is he?” 

“His name’s Carter Page,” Alyssa says. “So when I went to go talk to J.G. to ask him about the cameras, he told me that we needed to talk to the casino’s bouncer. But oh, what a shame, they’d recently let him go. Which led me into the direction of Paragon USA. They’re the agency that supplies bouncers around the area.” 

“I’ve heard,” George says. “So—did this help with the dead security guard?” 

“He was employed at the same agency as the Five-And-Dime’s bouncers,” Alyssa says. “They supply for some shady people, as you can see. But  _ apparently, _ Conrad Lennox’s boss had never worried about him getting in trouble with the wrong people because he’s, you know, a big guy. Super tall. Pathologist said the cocaine needed to kill him was the largest amount she’d ever seen.” 

“How fascinating,” George says.

“Isn’t it,” Alyssa says, evidently missing the dryness in his voice. “The club he used to work at is closed now, but when Special Enforcement  _ did _ investigate it, they didn’t find anything suspicious. Just drunk people gambling their money away, which you can get anywhere. But—if drunk people are gambling their money away  _ there _ , they’re not gambling it away at other places.”

“You mean at the Five-And-Dime,” George says. “Shit.”

“Yeah,” Alyssa says grimly. She waves a hand around at the rest of the department. “And when they kill off a bouncer and make sure  _ we _ don’t know it’s a murder, that gets to that other casino’s owners, right? That if other casinos don’t back off from Saint Don’s business, they can do all of that and worse. I looked into some numbers—three new buildings for rent downtown. You know what they were formerly? Casinos.” 

“That makes sense,” George says. Something else is itching at him. “It’s just—the stolen painting. I know it’s not your highest priority, but when Art Theft comes in, I don’t want them fucking up your homicide invesigation.” 

“I appreciate that,” Alyssa says. “So—what?”

“The pickup truck he was found in,” George says. “It was stolen, yeah? And at first it made sense to me that it would only be used as evidence for the murder, but—the art museum had a hole in the fence. We know Saint Don is involved in both the murder and the theft. What if they just wanted you to look for proof of the homicide, instead of also looking for remnants of the painting?”

Alyssa stares at him for a second. George waits for her to tell him he’s completely off-base, but she doesn’t do anything of the sort. 

“Holy shit,” she says. “Alvarez!”

** 

When George unlocks the door to his Airbnb that night, he can almost feel the phantom brush of his cat against his legs. He’s tired. So tired. He’d spent the rest of his workday painfully explaining the intricacies of investigating the crime scene of an art theft to a group of newbie police officers, and he doesn’t want anyone asking him what a forensic graphologist is ever again.

He lugs his suitcase back into its original position of the corner of his bedroom, and kicks it open with a flourish. He digs through his clothing to find his pill bottle, trying to decide what type of night it is—does he want it to hit faster or stay for longer? He’s tired enough to want it fast, but he’s stressed enough that it might be better to take two. 

He’s filled with the same longing he would have if he was coming home to a partner, which is kind of pathetic, but he doesn’t have much time to lick his own wounds because he can hear thumping at his front door. 

He looks at the clock. Nine. It would be technically socially acceptable for Hank or Darryl to be at his door right now, as long as it’s not a work-related reason. He pads to the door, undoing his tie as he does so. He opens the door expecting to see one of his coworkers but instead sees Dream.

“Hi,” he says.

Seven hours. They couldn’t go seven hours. 

George moves to close his door again, but Dream puts a hand between the doorframe and the door. “You blocked my number,” he says, like that’s a perfectly acceptable reason to show up to the house that George has  _ never given him the address to _ . 

“I said I wasn’t helping you anymore,” George says.

“You can say whatever you want, but I’m not going to keep helping you if you don’t help me,” Dream says. “What happened to tit-for-tat, man?” 

“I don’t need—” George says, and then lowers his voice and looks across the street. the people that live around him don’t know  _ him _ , but they certainly know Dream. “Jesus, get inside. You can’t just show up to my fucking house. I don’t need your help.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Dream says, letting George pull him inside and watching him bolt the door shut. He looks around idly. “This place looks like the set of the Brady Bunch.”

“I know,” George says. He crosses his arms, watching Dream toe his sneakers off and trapeze to his couch—not  _ his  _ couch. This isn’t George’s house. It’s a temporary place for him to live. “What is it?” 

“I just wanted to make sure you were alive,” Dream says, throwing himself onto the couch. “And I figured I’d update you on Arla. She’s back in my house safe and sound, but she kind of won’t let me in right now because she’s pissed off at me and thinks I ratted her out. So.” 

“She’s not letting you into… your own house?” George repeats.

“I get it as much as you do,” Dream says. “It’s fine. I can wait a night. I kinda miss my cat, but I can wait a night.”

“You shouldn’t have gotten her out,” George says tiredly. “She’s being accused of drug trafficking. She could’ve—if she’d told the truth about not being involved with Saint Don until he needed her for the art theft, it would’ve made everything so much easier. They’re going to look for her now.”

“You thought it was going to be that simple?” Dream asks, craning his neck to make his head comfortable on the arm of the couch. “She’s a lot of things, but she’s not a snitch. And you don’t have to worry about anyone looking for her. The night shift can sleep well tonight knowing she’s safe and sound in a cozy bed and they’re five hundred dollars richer.” 

_ You really shouldn’t tell me about bribing police officers like I’m not going to tell anyone _ , George thinks, but knows he isn’t going to tell anyone. “You shouldn’t be here.” 

“You really like telling me what I shouldn’t do,” Dream says, “So I think _I’m_ going to tell _you_ what you shouldn’t do. What you shouldn’t do is block my fucking number so I have to stake out the police department and find out where you’ve been staying this entire time. What you shouldn’t do is pretend like you can get _anywhere_ in Florida without me.” 

“Art Theft is creating a task force here,” George says, instead of responding. Something else he shouldn’t do: tell Dream how the investigation is being run. “I don’t need you to get me in deeper and deeper shit just because you think it might have  _ something  _ to do with my case. I can figure it out on my own from here.”

“Saint Don knows,” Dream says. 

“What?” George says. “Saint Don knows what?” 

“That you’re interrogating Arla,” Dream says. “Only problem is that he thinks it’s about the art theft. What he  _ doesn’t  _ know is that Special Enforcement’s going to start investigating his drug trade. Not to mention the murder. He doesn’t know what kind of shit is about to hit the fan.” He sits up again to grab at the throw blanket over George’s couch. “Use that. Play into what he doesn’t know.” 

“How the fuck am I supposed to know what he doesn’t know?” George snaps.

“From me,” Dream says. He yawns heavily, dropping his head against the couch. “Hope you don’t mind if I crash here tonight.” 

“That’s fine,” George says, a moment later, but Dream is already closing his eyes. When his face is calm and gentle he looks like some kind of impressionist portrait, like he’s made of thin, faint lines. George thinks Monet would have made him bolder. Brighter colors. 

He walks back to his hallway and back to his bed and moves to open his pill bottle, but the thought makes him feel sick, and then he remembers how much he’d wanted them—the same way he’s wanted to solve this case so much it ached—and he’d thought Dream was the pills but he’s not, because he’s so much worse. So, so much worse.


	7. FORGET-ME-NOTS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Please don’t ask me questions I can’t answer. I’m too scared I’ll answer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> soundtrack for the party scenes was the entire paradise edition of the born to die album by lana.... essential listening obvz
> 
> i hope u like this one it was fun to write! :D

The first person George meets is the intern. He doesn’t remember him, but he certainly remembers George.

“Nick,” he says, jutting a hand out and waiting for George to shake it. George is running a stack of dashcam footage to Alyssa, so he has to awkwardly shuffle it under his arm as he takes Nick’s hand, watching him shake it furiously. Impressive grip. “Nice bruise, dude. You look like a mobster or something. It’s sick.”

“Oh, right,” George says. He’s trying not to think about the bruise too much. When he’d woken up Dream had still been on his couch, but he’d been wearing a hoodie George didn’t recognize and his eyes had been crusted over and bleary, and he’d walked over, touched George’s nose, and said, “You look so fucking stupid with that bruise. Seriously. You don’t own foundation or anything?” And George had said, “Why the fuck would I own foundation,” and Dream had said, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a pansy cop thing.” And then he’d found a box of butterfly bandages in the medicine cabinet and stuck one over the bluest part of the bruise. George still thinks he looks stupid, but it helps close tiny cut in the shallow. “Yeah. It’s just—it’s kind of a long story.”

“All good,” Nick says cheerily. The first thing George notices about him is that he’s not sweating. George has been in a constant state of perspiration since Miami, and this random intern from New York is handling the heat better than he is. “Do you need to take those anywhere?”

“These?” George asks. “Yeah, I—I’m just running them to Alyssa. It’s for the homicide case.”

“So unrelated to my work responsibilities,” Nick says. “Awesome.”

Before George can bid him an uncomfortable farewell Baker steps to the front of their main whiteboard and clears his throat loudly, stepping aside to make room for Proctor. He’s shorter than Baker, with darker skin and closer-cropped hair, but their expressions are virtually indistinguishable to George. 

“Okay, everyone,” Baker says loudly, clapping his hands together to get the attention of the floor of beat cops. George drops the stack of files against the table Baker stands in front of, shoving his hands into his pockets, willing himself to stay awake through the speech. “I’m sure many of you have noticed the changes we’ve been making to the department prior to the arrival of the Art unit at the F.B.I.—for those of you in Special Enforcement, this is less related to your focus on Saint Don than it is important for you to share your information with Proctor and his team, and of course my Homicide unit should know the degree of involvement…”

“So fucking boring,” Nick breathes from next to him.

George has to hide his tiny smirk with a cough into his fist, and Nick gives him a self-satisfied look. It’s a lot of talk for very little purpose. 

George knows why Baker is giving the speech: he wants Proctor to think they’ve managed to get anything done in their impending arrival other than panic. Proctor watches on with an enlightened smile in George’s general direction, never once looking over into Baker’s vicinity.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Proctor says, when he finishes. He doesn’t give him a second before he’s cutting off his voice. “My team and I are honored to work with the Orlando division for what will hopefully be a short time as our combined resources help us finally nail this bastard.” He looks over at the sheep-eyes of the crowd. “Although I would still like to mention that—although we appreciate the work that’s already been done here—I do hope that you will all keep in mind that federal jurisdiction trumps the decisions made by city-centric divisions. This is the cornerstone of our justice system and it’s my hope that our guidance in our Art Theft case will improve the course of the Special Enforcement and Violent Crimes units. Thank you.”

The rest of the room claps confusedly as Proctor shakes Baker’s hand again and starts whispering feverishly to one of his detectives, who nods wildly and types on the laptop she hasn’t left for the past few hours. George stands there for a second, and then—against his better judgement—looks over at Nick.

“What the hell was he even saying there?” He asks.

Nick shrugs. “They can do whatever they want and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

George was not expecting that. “That’s what you got from his speech?”

“He makes it all the time,” Nick says, as an explanation. “I’ve been his PA since he was head of Cyber Crimes.” He studies the look on George’s face. “Not like you have anything to worry about, though. Aren’t you a specialist?”

“Yeah,” George says. He could talk at length about how being a specialist for Orlando hasn’t made his life any easier—rather, he’d argue that he probably should’ve stayed in the U.K. and made some long-distance phone-calls, if they’re going by situations that have given him an unhealthy amount of worry.

The depressing part is that he can’t deny this is the most progress they’ve made in a long time. He should’ve guessed the F.B.I. would make a guest appearance the moment he told Wallace to put Saint Don on his radar. 

_ They’re going to seize your investigation and charge you with police misconduct _ , he thinks. He’s not going to forget what Arla told him so soon—unless he solves it before Wallace finds out. “There’s been some good parts, but it’s mostly… it can be constrictive, here.” 

“If you really think that, I’m sorry for what Proctor’s going to do to you,” Nick says. “I’m getting the fuck out of here the minute I figure out what I want to do with my life, mark my words, but until then—I don’t know. I guess I’ll be watching everything burn down alongside you.”

“Nice,” George says. “Looking forward to it.”

His first thought is that he needs to check on Arla. Dream had been out before he’d woken up, he knows that much, but he forgot to ask whether he’d snuck Arla back into holding or if Violent Crimes needs to lead a witch-hunt. Before he can head towards the cells, he catches Hank trying to wave him over desperately, so he caves and turns on his heel. 

“George,” he says. “Lowery’s in the interrogation room. Proctor’s detectives just finished their interrogation, and they’re letting us go next. Did you read the transcript?” He pauses from where Alyssa is seething next to his arm. “Alyssa’s not handling it well.” 

“She’s _ my _ suspect,” she snaps, brushing her hair away from her face in poorly-concealed frustration. "Special Enforcement’s, too. If she has anything to do with the theft, it’s only going to be knowing about it. They’re that determined to charge her with accessory?” 

“ _ Wait _ ,” George says. And nobody had fucking told him? “They’ve questioned Lowery already? I just got here!” 

Hank shrugs at him, but before he can say anything else George rushes past him, pushing into the locked door that precedes the interrogation room. Proctor and the detective with the laptop are waiting inside, watching Arla and her lawyer knock their hands together. 

“Proctor,” George hisses immediately, but he only flicks his eyes over to glance at George for a moment. He puts a hand up, motioning his head towards the room, but George’s anger is already bubbling up to his skin like seafoam and he can barely contain himself when he says, “This is an international case. If you’re interrogating her about the Backus, I  _ am  _ to be involved in the conversation.”

“Detective Davidson—” the woman with the laptop starts, but George steps closer to her before he can convince himself to ignore the flaps of red cape. 

“I realize this specific stolen art is under American jurisdiction, but England hasn’t had a lead for this case for  _ months _ ,” George says. Something he probably shouldn’t admit, knowing the heaping superiority complex the F.B.I. has, but it seems relevant. “ _ I’m _ the reason Baker’s team has even managed to get her into the box, so if you genuinely think—”

“Detective Davidson,” Proctor says again. Coolly. He points at the window. “She’s been telling Noveschosch that J.G. has set her up.”

George freezes. He can feel his nerves clenching against his throat, pushing out of the corners of his eyes, and he opens his mouth, turning to look through the window, but Proctor speaks before he can say anything else. “Based on what I’ve heard so far, we’re left to believe it’s mostly unwarranted, but it’s still good to hear the entire statement first.” 

“She—” George says, and watches Arla wipe an imaginary tear from the underside of her eye. Her lips curl against her hand like a snake’s tail. “My source told me everything. About how she’s travelled across the United States but stopped in Florida for—God knows what. She’s Saint Don’s link to the Orlando region and I’ve already confirmed with Wallace that he’s involved in the theft—what the fuck am I missing?” 

“She’s claiming he worked out a deal to implicate her on the theft,” Proctor says. “A very interesting twist on a he-said-she-said indeed. She’s willing to work with us on what she knows about the theft if they drop the drug trafficking charge.”

Like George hasn’t heard that before. “That seems too good to be true.”

“I agree,” Proctor says. “That’s why we’re going to make sure her statement is backed up before we make any snap judgements. But depending on what she says—the department should be prepared to drop her as a suspect.”

“Alyssa isn’t going to like that,” George says, looking down at his shoes. He looks back at Arla’s self-indulgent little grin as she leans back in her seat. Her eyes are bloodshot and her hands are still cuffed, and she still manages to look cocky. That interrogation chair does incredible things to people. 

“Of course, once we get J.G.’s statement, it should be enough to clear you of any wrongdoing,” the female detective adds, lifting her head up alongside George’s to try and make eye contact. “Unless there’s anything you’d like to admit to right off the bat.” 

_ If they knew anything _ , George tries to think,  _ they’d have held it against you by now.  _ He rubs at his nose lightly, feeling a shock of pain through the bruise. He tries to tamp down his thoughts just in case they can read anything off his face.

“Nothing comes to mind,” he says. He’d thought it was going to be easy to ward off a J.G. interrogation, but Arla had seemed to know that too. “Um—I know the—extradition will be difficult.” 

Proctor and his detective share an amused look. “Assuming he has legal citizenship in the U.K. as well, yes,” he says. George doesn’t know why this irks him. “This will be one of the most infamous charges of theft of major artwork in America, detective. That’s not something to be taken lightly.” 

“I didn’t mean to—dilute—the importance,” George says, voice rigid. Like it’s their case. Like they’ve been slaving over it for a year, uprooting their entire lives, breaking the fucking law for it. “The Backus is yours. But the Palmer is mine.”

Proctor holds the eye contact. A second passes.

“That sounds reasonable,” he says carefully, as if making sure his words aren’t legally binding. “I’d prefer we interview J.G. before Special Enforcement or Violent Crimes implicates him on anything.”

“Let me handle it,” George tells them, and pushes away back into Alyssa’s general direction. He isn’t sure if he missed them making her the lead detective on the murder investigation, or if she’s just taken too much responsibility into her own hands. 

It’s a good idea, the art investigation notwithstanding. If Saint Don doesn’t know Special Enforcement is going to start investigating his casino, it’ll be much easier to push his attention to trying to cover up the homicide. He may have money, but George doubts he’s going to be able to cover up all of his weak spots. And that gives them an in.

The only hard part is trying to translate that for Violent Crimes. No amount of bottles full of tiny shells is enough to convince Alyssa that her murder investigation ranks underneath matters of artistic fraud.

“No matter if J.G. is arrested for the homicide or because of his involvement in Saint Don’s circle, it’s not going to be because of your  _ paintings _ ,” she tells him. The harshness of her face fades, and she rubs at the spots under her eyes. “Fuck. Sorry, George. I just—you can’t genuinely expect me to prioritize a museum over a human life.”

“I don’t,” he says, vaguely embarrassed. The guilt is everywhere, always, but he can’t tell her that. “It just—if you let them interrogate him first, you never know what he’s going to admit if he thinks you’re not onto the murder.”

“But then the reverse,” Hank says slowly. “If  _ we  _ interrogate him first, Art Crime is just as likely to find an in as we are. And he’s less likely to run from our case.” He catches the way George’s face drops, but doesn’t rush to defend anything. Darryl taps his fingers on the desk, and they look over at him.

“I just don’t know how well this is going to go over with Baker, George,” he says, trying to keep his tone light. That digs deep—Darryl is the one person George always expects to play devil’s advocate against his own side, if only to keep any further conflict from bubbling over. George looks away. “And I know they tried to tell us Art Crime takes precedent here, but—J.G.’s not even a confirmed suspect for them. We have greater grounds in our investigation than some faulty rumor from Arla Lowery. I vote we talk to him first. All in favor?”

Alyssa’s hand is up first. Hank’s is next—slower but steady. George crosses his arms and looks back at the interrogation room, where he can see Proctor and his detective’s bodies silhouetted against the stained glass of the door. 

“I was supposed to convince you to give him to them,” George mutters. There’s something oddly fanatical about the rush for J.G.’s interrogation. He feels like they’re all pulling at three parts of a wishbone—the painting, the murder, the drug trade. He has to rush to remind himself that he’s here for the art. He’s here for the art, not the friends or the drugs or the boys. 

“They’re still going to be able to convict him, George,” Darryl tries to say. It’s not as impactful when he’s rushing to clip his belt onto his badge and rush out from where Alyssa slips away. “As long as we can find out what he knows about the homicide, they can do whatever they want afterwards.” He pauses from ruffling the collar of his shirt. “Just give us this. Okay?”

“Okay,” George says, finally, and watches them leave. For a long time. He’d told Alyssa he didn’t want Art Theft fucking up her homicide investigation, and he’s realizing quickly why he shouldn’t be making any promises. If J.G. comes back to the department under a conspiracy charge, he’s going to be a dead man walking.

He finds Proctor yelling at Nick after that. He can tell because there’s a tiny sliver of nerves between his eyebrows and he’s gritting his jaw so tightly George can carve it out with his fingers. “Proctor,” he says hurriedly, partially to catch the look of relief on Nick’s face. “Violent Crimes is moving in on J.G., but it isn’t something to—”

“I’m sorry,” Proctor says, putting a hand in and leaning closer. “The same J.G. you just promised you’d assure us for our interrogation?”

“It’s...” George says, and watches his voice trail off before he notices it’s gone. His throat feels like waxy parchment paper; he can feel the spit sliding down, and he has to step back, remember where he’s supposed to be. “It’s going to be fine. It’s not going to endanger anything about our questioning. As long as Special Enforcement stays away—”

“Davidson,” a voice says from behind him. The female detective with the big eyes and the laptop. “Your Chief Detective just emailed me—Wallace, right? It’s something I think you should see.”

He looks over at Proctor, desperately. “Go,” he says tersely. “I’ll handle Special Enforcement.” 

Disconcerting, but not disconcerting enough to make George rush to the aid of the Orlando Narcotics unit. He doubts Proctor is going to tell them to stand by in a way they haven’t already considered. He leans down to look at the detective’s monitor as she clicks out of a few tabs.

“Proctor wanted an open line of communication with the U.K., obviously, but that’s mostly just been updating our files with information learned on either end,” she says, and George nods. He’s made his own share of frantic faxes this past month. “But this—when I read up on field reports, I saw that his full name is John-Gabriel, right? But look. We just found his British passport. Gabriel John.” 

George skims the passport. He’s not wearing glasses in the picture, and his hair is longer, bangs spread over his forehead in a way that makes his face look thinner. “And he has a charge for drug distribution,” George says grimly. “Did Wallace tell you how he found this?”

“He was the only result for a search for Saint Don’s legal name in the database,” the detective says. “Which raises some difficult questions about extradition, as you mentioned. And it didn’t even show up in the field for his name. Only here—the last known address. Donatello Garcia Road.” 

“Of fucking course,” George says under his breath. His head pounds against the computer screen, so he pushes away before he starts feeling nauseous. “How much are you willing to bet they do that on all of their passports to identify each other?”

“Who?” The detective says uneasily.

“Does it matter?” George snaps. “The art theft team, Saint Don’s drug dealers—one and the fucking same at this point, aren’t they? This should’ve just been Special Enforcement’s investigation, not—an excuse to pile  _ more  _ onto the lives of Homicide detectives. It’s sick.” She’s still blinking up at him, completely not asking for George to unload all of his anger onto her, so he has to recollect himself. “Sorry. It’s—sorry.” 

He has to distract himself after that. He breaks the first rule of remaining high functioning, which is snorting half of a pill during his lunch break, and then he pours over the warrant for the car search and makes a few notes for things he’s going to have to add. If he’s going to cause problems for Violent Crimes, he may as well ask Baker for a more in-depth chemical analysis. 

He goes to the crime scene with Proctor and then makes sure his detective shows Alyssa and Hank and Darryl J.G.’s passport and then the day is over. His veins are still buzzing with the tension of keeping himself on his feet the entire day. 

He leaves at a normal time that evening, which is both rare and weirdly unwelcome. George is expecting the tension, but what he doesn’t expect is the conversation Hank and Darryl have alongside him in hushed voices. Like it’s something George won’t want to hear—or, worse, something he’s not  _ allowed  _ to hear. He stands by Darryl’s car with his hands in his pockets.

“—be okay,” Hank is saying, before he turns to George and gives him a flimsy smile. “Sorry, man, we just—it was a hard day. Got a lot done, though.” 

“All good,” George says. “What did you find out?”

They share another look. George speaks before they can think of some kind of excuse. “If you can’t tell me, just say that instead. Jesus Christ.”

“It’s not that,” Darryl says. “It’s just—I don’t know. You seemed kind of on edge today.”

“We just didn’t want to say anything that would stress you out too much,” Hank adds. “That’s all.”

He’s more than stressed. He’d woken up this morning and he’d gone to take a pill for his headache, but he’s running dangerously low and he’d had to crack one in half and deal with it on the way to work. “You shouldn’t be thinking about what’s stressing me out,” George says. He wants to tell them he only feels productive when he’s detoxing, physical ailments and all, but that would require a much longer explanation than he has time for. “I didn’t catch whether you brought J.G. in.” 

“We did,” Hank says. “You can read the report on Monday. You’re still coming to Baker’s thing on Saturday, right?”

George exhales deeply. “Shit. I completely forgot.” It would be easy to get out of going—he could probably just travel back over the Atlantic if he doesn’t feel like going—but if he wants Hank and Darryl to think he’s still a functioning member of society, he’s going to have to do a lot of shit he doesn’t like. “Yeah. I’ll be there.”

“It’s gonna be fun,” Darryl adds in the silence. “There’s… finger-foods. Someone’s always playing the cello.” The look on his face tenses up. “Maybe it’s not that fun at all. Whatever. You still have to come.” 

**

George doesn’t start drinking at Baker’s soiree, against Hank’s advice. They’re in the backyard of Baker’s Winter Park house, and it hasn’t surprised George in the slightest yet: it’s smaller on the inside; the stone it’s made of is very obviously wallpaper; the bedrooms are locked from the inside and outnumber the tenants three-to-one. 

If he’d known it was a McMansion, he wouldn’t have brought a bottle of wine. Darryl and Hank had advised him not to, but they weren’t the ones who had been singled out for an invitation. George had spent a stressful morning trying to find a suit jacket he hadn’t already drenched in vodka in Miami, and then he figured he’d be able to make up for seeming so disorganized if he bought really, really good wine. 

But there was, of course, no need to seem organized, since he and the department aren’t the only ones at the party. There are business owners and housewives with pearl necklaces and hired help in black dresses, and politicians Baker invited to schmooze. 

George had seen Proctor and the female detective somewhere at the front entrance, strangely enough, but avoiding them wasn’t too difficult. Hank and Darryl are still busy pouring themselves champagne inside, but there are so many people he’ll have to introduce himself to in there, and the backyard really is lovely. There are bushes of tiny blue flowers, and there’s a raised platform where a shitty band is playing classical music. No cello. There’s a pool house overlooking an empty pool. 

That’s where Saint Don’s money goes. Paying for a backyard so open George can make out the finger-paint stains in the purpling sky. 

Behind him, he hears a loud sniffle. When he turns around, there’s a girl and a boy—young, but different ages—looking up at him with peering eyes. They’re both in fancy dress but the boy’s mouth is smeared with chocolate.

“Um,” George says, because he doesn’t really know what else to do. Tell them to go play hide and seek or something? Jingle his keys as a distraction? “Hi there.” 

“You’re British,” the little boy says. “Like Peppa Pig.” 

“If she was a police officer, yes,” George says.  _ Or if she had a giant fuck-off bruise on her nose. _

“Have you ever seen a dead body?” The girl asks. 

“ _ Oh _ , what are you—don’t bother Detective Davidson,” he hears a voice say. He hears the tinkle of fine jewelry before he recognizes Baker’s wife—Dream’s mother. She places a gentle hand on the top of the boy’s head, stroking at his hair. “Don’t you two want to go back inside and play with Niki again?”

“I don’t  _ want  _ to play with Niki,” the boy says. “I miss Clay. It’s so boring when Clay’s not here.” 

The girl nods along—she’s older, but the boy must be saying exactly what she’s thinking, because she looks just as unexcited. “Why isn’t he here, anyway?” She asks her mother, who presses her lips together thinly.

“Clay… couldn't make it, tonight,” she says. “Hurry along, now. I’d like to have a word with the Detective, all right?” The kids scurry off, shoving at each other but somehow not tumbling onto the grass. Mrs. Baker watches them with a tiny smile, which she turns onto George.

“I’m sorry about them,” she says. “They can be very—excitable.”

“Oh, it’s completely fine,” George says. He misses his sister, out of nowhere. “They’re adorable.”

“They’re usually easier to contain when their brother’s around,” she says. He expects her to look as distraught as Baker at the memory, but her face just softens as if hit by a ray of sunlight. “Clay. My oldest.”

“I don’t think I’ve met him,” George says. He’d met Baker’s wife earlier in the evening, when Baker had led him to her for a brief introduction. She’d been the one to accept his wine and kiss him on the cheek at the price tag. 

“No matter,” she says. She places a hand on his forearm. “Come. Let me show you around the house. I’m so fascinated by the fact that you work in Art and Antiques—my son is studying Art History, just like I did, so just  _ hearing  _ about the stolen A.E. Backus struck such a chord with me…”

It’s easy to make small talk with Mrs. Baker because she knows how to fill empty silences. She tugs at his arm with gentle excitement, offers him those tiny cream-cheese sandwiches topped off with cucumbers, makes affected noises when he tells her about the stolen Spanish sculpture—she’s a good hostess, but still pleasant to talk to. It’s better than listening to the band or talking to Proctor.

Inside he finds Hank and Darryl. They’re standing next to Niki, who Mrs. Baker greets with an air kiss to her cheek. They all fake a laugh when she makes the expected comment about her pink hair being spunky. 

She’s in a black dress, and Hank and Darryl aren’t wearing ties, but they still all manage to look opulent. George doesn't think it’s worth it to learn that kind of casual elegance they all carry themselves with, but he still tries to keep his back straight. He finds a flute of champagne to hold and not drink. 

“I definitely hesitate to define post-Impressionism, yes,” Mrs. Baker is saying. The dining room has had its chairs pushed to the side to give guests room to mingle, and the high ceilings are coated in a warm glow from the icicle chandelier. George looks up at it. It doesn’t look much different from the one in the Glacier. “I do agree with Rewald’s argument that the term is more convenient than it is accurate. The parameters that expound the descent into Fauvism are a lot looser than the ones that followed Van Gogh, don’t you agree?”

“Oh, yes,” Niki says agreeably. George watches Darryl cover his laugh with his hand and has to do the same. 

“I have a wonderful original Friesz oil painting in my office,” Mrs. Baker tells George eagerly. “You must remind me to show it to you.”

George opens his mouth to respond, but then he catches sight of a dark silhouette by the main entrance, easily available from where they’re cramped in a corner in front of Mrs. Baker’s painting. Dream is wearing a black suit jacket and a tie as white as his teeth. 

“Oh, no,” Darryl says. 

The music doesn’t stop. Why does George expect the music to stop? The violin is shrill, stabs like the pinpricks of rose thorns, and Dream steps forward again, plucking a glass of wine away from the tray of a disorientated waiter. He looks around the room, and when eyes catch on him they don’t pull away—like pieces of skin snagged against a nail—and then there’s pairs and pairs of eyes glued firmly on the way the wine trickles over his bottom lip. He pulls the glass away from his mouth. And then he smiles. 

“I’m sure you were all worried I couldn’t make it,” he says. His voice is quiet, but it reverberates anyway, with the way voices around him silence as if muffled by cotton. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t miss one of Lieutenant Baker’s parties for the world.”

“Oh, God,” Mrs. Baker says. “Come with me, come—” She grabs Niki, and they both hurry away into his direction, and George watches everyone around them hastily descent back into conversation, so he makes a show of turning his back to them before he starts talking to Darryl and Hank. The conversation starts back up again, but he doesn’t miss how frazzled they both look.

“I should’ve guessed,” Darryl says grimly. 

“Guessed what?” George asks.

He waves his flute of champagne around in irritation. “That he’d find a way to worm himself back under Baker’s skin,” Darryl says. “You can tell everyone knows what he’s here for.”

“I’m guessing it’s not the souffle,” George says.

Darryl shakes his head. “It’s been happening for years. Last year, when he was—away, Baker didn’t have anything to worry about—no spiked non-alcoholic champagne, no band canceling at the last minute, no  _ very  _ public fistfights with politicians. I’m pretty sure they both made an effort to ban him this year, but—” he nods towards the empty entrance. “People don’t tell him what to do.”

George wants to tell them he’s never found it hard to tell Dream what to do. But then again—Dream’s getting awfully too comfortable with wielding him like a weapon. Maybe he only listens to people that he can use. 

“ _ And  _ he’s wearing a white tie,” Hank says unnecessarily. “He must have a death wish.”

God forbid someone wears a white tie. They talk for a little while longer, but then the dark sky beckons down at them—it’s the color of George’s suit—and the band stops playing classical music, switches to something more lively. He thinks it’s Billie Holiday. Someone drunk is singing along.

George ambles about looking for something to eat, and finally unearths a plate full of tiny tomatoes skewered with tiny pieces of mozzarella. He leaves his wine somewhere where it won’t bother him anymore and watches a member of the City Council make idle small talk with Baker. He can’t hear the conversation that well, but they keep saying  _ funds _ . Or maybe they’re saying  _ fun _ .

It doesn’t matter, either way. “You look good in a suit,” Dream says, in his ear.

George twists around so quickly he’s glad he’s cloaked by the Earth’s five-o’clock shadow. Dream tilts his head at him as if waiting for a response, hands clenched behind his back, but George just moves his body away. He’d rather people think he just stands uncomfortably close to people instead of assuming he’s Dream’s friend. 

“You shouldn’t be talking to me in public,” George says. 

“When did we establish  _ that _ ?” Dream asks. 

“You shouldn’t be here, either,” George says. “A little birdie told me you were banned.”

“Banned,” Dream scoffs. “Banned, I mean—did Baker technically tell me, like, a few months ago, that I was  _ not _ to come to the department party under  _ any  _ circumstances, and if I did he’d have me brought into the station on the charge of being a public disturbance? Yes, he did tell me that.”

“That… sounds like being banned,” George says, after a pause.

“My  _ mother _ , however, promised I’d be welcome back home that night for leftovers if I felt like it,” he adds, looking very self-satisfied. “Not my fault if I just happened to forget what time the party actually ends. And I’m still going to stick around for leftovers. I’m breaking no rules.” 

“What’s there to see?” George asks. He already feels like going home. “Everyone is only politely drunk and they’re singing Ella Fitzgerald.” 

“Sue me for wanting to get a little dressed up,” Dream says, affronted. “Or wanting to see  _ District Attorney Catherine Sanchez _ dressed up, am I right?” George gives him an unimpressed look. Dream sighs. “Okay. Tough crowd. I get it. I just think there’s some things people around here need to hear.”

“Like what?” George says. And then: “Oh my God, Dream. Should I be worried?” 

“Worried?” Dream says. “About _me_? The angel? No. Never.” He thinks about it. “If anything, you should be excited. I’m going to be doing you a favor.”

“What?” George says, and then just sighs. “Did you just come here to find me?”

“ _ No _ ,” Dream says. “Just a happy coincidence.” He skips a beat. “You also weren’t home.”

“So you just figured I’d be here,” George says. 

“I’m not a total idiot,” Dream says. “You don’t have anything else to do on a Saturday, so.” He looks around the backyard disinterestedly. The band’s singer is crooning a ballad, and he moves his head slightly to the music. “I’ve had to have the last Saturday of September marked off in my calendar for, like, the past five years. Oh—watch this. Watch.”

Baker steps up to the singer and says something in her ear and she nods, patting him on the arm as she steps down from the mic. He taps it a few times, clears his throat, and the crowd peeks up at the platform in a sudden gathering that George doesn’t expect. He steps away from Dream, watching him wiggle his way to the front to look Baker straight in the eyes. 

Baker says something about how happy he is that everyone was able to arrive. If they’d enjoyed the food. If they could give a brief applause to the wonderful band. In that brief intermission, Mrs. Baker steps up next to him, and he kisses her on the cheek. Dream clutches his glass so tightly it creaks.

He talks about how pleased he is that so many people he loves can be together in one room. “My beautiful daughter, and my wonderful son,” he says, and the crowd turns into Dream like a magnetic force, the eyes and the voices clicking on again. He doesn’t have to say any names, because everyone knows who he means. “My fantastic department, whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with for the past fifteen years. The visiting Art Crime unit. Our incredible Police Chief. The Honorable Justice Brian Scott…”

He drones on lists of names—all political suitors who funnel more money into police funds than education—and then he finishes, beaming against the waves of applause. But before the crowd can dissipate around him, Dream clears his throat.

“Are you taking any questions, Lieutenant?” He asks loudly, raising a hand as if in a classroom. George freezes, but the look on his face is so completely diegetic. And Dream knows it: his entire display is meant for public consumption. Even for George.  _ Especially  _ for George. “Because I have a few I’d like to get out of the way before Your Eminence Justice Brian Scott downs one too many vodka tonics.”

Voices shush each other and cry out in surprise, like insulted, clucking hens. “Why, I—” a voice says in the crowd—probably the aforementioned Justice Brian Scott—but Baker is gritting his teeth and shoving the microphone back in its stand, the noise ringing out from the speakers dug into the grass. 

He pushes himself off of the stand, and Mrs. Baker follows him, trying to pull for his suit jacket even as he grabs the front of Dream’s jacket and pulls his face closer. “You stupid, spoiled little  _ imbecile _ ,” he snarls, and then Dream says, “You’ve told me a lot worse than that, Dad,” and pushes away. He faces the crowd, hands outstretched.

“I know how much it hurts to see your melodrama on display,” he says. “But I have a question—no, Lieutenant, I have a fucking  _ question _ , and you’re going to answer it. Why have you been letting Saint Don pay you off?” 

George feels his mouth form Dream’s name, but no sound comes out.  _ Stop him _ , his senses are screaming,  _ stop him right now—hit him or push him away or pull out every single person’s eyes so that they can’t see what’s going on, but stop him, stop him, stop him.  _

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Baker says fiercely. Voices chatter insistently around him, fill George’s mouth like chewing gum, like nicotine, like saliva. 

“Don’t I?” Dream sneers. “ _ Don’t _ I? Everyone knows what’s been going on inside Violent Crimes. Ten-thousand dollars each month so you can renovate the kitchen and upgrade the yacht, and—for what price? You toss and turn a little more in your sleep?” 

“Clay,” Mrs. Baker says, “ _ Please _ —”, but he doesn’t listen to her. 

“You have no idea what I live with every day,” Baker says. “You’ve never worked a day in your goddamn  _ life _ . I’ve dragged you along for years and years, and—and I get—this  _ insolence _ . This complete and utter disrespect.” He wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “You’re a fucking curse on me. You’re a fucking curse on this  _ family _ , Clay.” 

Dream’s face slits in half as if cut by fine glass, but he doesn’t stagger backwards. His feet remain firmly rooted. “You’ve never been my fucking family.” 

And then one of them hits the other. George can’t tell what happens, because the violinist lashes out at his strings in shock, and they almost look like they’re ballroom dancing, the way Baker’s hands grasp around his face and Dream’s mouth bursts like a pricked fruit in a loud arc of red. He hears people scream, people run, but nobody moves to pull their bodies away, so he slashes forward, grabs Dream around the waist and  _ tugs _ . 

Mrs. Baker is next, bringing Baker to his feat as he stumbles to a halt, touching against his busted, sensitive face. Bodies crowd around them, and Dream is still lunging against the grip George has on his body, so he moves his mouth closer to his ear and says, “Stop,  _ stop  _ it, Clay,” and strangely—magically—he  _ listens _ .

He can feel Dream’s throat breathe against his hand, and he moves away, wiping Dream’s bloody spit from his palms. Dream looks at him, and opens his mouth. His teeth are dyed over and his tongue is bitten through. His eyes are glassy but not tearful when he turns and runs towards the pool.

George looks at the group of people—all people he doesn’t know, but good people, so detached from a world they can’t help but profit off of. He almost feels the pity of watching an animal nurse a wound it’s given itself when he sees them crowd around Baker.

He should stay here. Hank and Darryl must be in that crowd. Alyssa, too, if she’d finally made it. These are not his people, but they’re  _ people _ , and they’re afraid, probably think Dream is going to hurt them or yell at them or kill them, but—he’s not. 

The pool house is cold, the A/C cranked in a way that gives George a half second of solace before he sees Dream. Dream sees him in the mirror, watches him close the door gently behind him. 

“ _ Dream _ ,” George says immediately. “You can’t just—God, I should’ve known you do whatever you fucking want. I should’ve known.”

“Whatever  _ I  _ want?” Dream says, suddenly. He flips around, and for a moment he looks terrifying, with blood in his mouth that isn’t George’s. “Are you a fucking idiot or what? How could you ever think—that was for  _ you,  _ you asshole. That was so that when you go back to work on Monday and ask to go undercover in Saint Don’s clubs again, or question him about the fucking theft, or the murder—he’s going to say yes. Of course he’s going to say yes. How is he going to say  _ no _ , with all of those people—” he points a distrustful finger outside of the window of the pool house, “—watching his every move, from now on? He might deny it, but they’re never going to forget what I said about him. He’s stained.” Dream spits on the floor. “Like the rest of us.” 

“That shit back there wasn’t for  _ me _ ,” George says. In a twisted sort of way, he can understand Dream’s explanation, but that’s when he reads it with all of the barbed wire curled over it. “That was for  _ you _ . That was because you’re a sad little fuck with an obsession for revenge.”

“Fuck you,” Dream says, stepping forward. 

“Fuck  _ you _ ,” George pushes back, with just as much malice, watching Dream’s proverbial ears twitch downward as he relaxes his body from its permanent fighting stance. “You can say… you can say that it was to help me, but we both know that’s not the first reason you did it.” 

“Like you know,” Dream says. 

_ It doesn’t make sense, otherwise _ , George wants to tell him. “I thought you were all about the tit-for-tat.” 

Dream’s face flickers over with a flush. “Whatever,” he mutters, looking down at his shoes, and rubs at his mouth again. George doesn’t know what to say from there, so he leans forward and grabs Dream’s arm, dragging him over to the sink across from the mirror. He can’t see himself from here, but he can see Dream. He runs a washcloth under the tap.

“What’re you—” he says, and then George muffles his voice with the washcloth. He blinks.

“Don’t talk,” George says. “Open your mouth.” Dream does. “Just a little bit. Jesus.” He wipes away the blood, enjoying the way Dream grimaces whenever he pushes too hard at the cut. The blood swirls down the drain between their prolonged silence.

“Rinse out your mouth,” George says. He watches Dream push his hair back and duck his mouth under the sink, swishing it between his cheeks before he spits back out into the tap.

“Your bruise looks better,” Dream mumbles, when he lifts his head back up. 

“Still hurts like hell, though,” George says, and leans forward to touch at Dream’s lip. “Does it hurt—here?” Dream nods, but George doesn’t move his hand away. “Yeah? It’s not too deep. It’ll scab over quickly.” 

“It’ll be fine,” Dream says. He runs his tongue over his inflamed lip, prodding against George’s pointer finger, upper lip closing over it for just a second—a second George can count out, identify. “We can match.”

Before George can say anything else, he hears the door tilt open again. He expects it to be Baker, so he snatches his hand away guiltily, but they see Niki instead. That’s even worse for being caught with his fingers in Dream’s mouth.  _ Caught together, hanged together. _ She’s holding her heels in one hand and an ice pack in the other, swaying awkwardly.

“I came as fast as I could,” she says, padding over to them on bare feet. She pauses, studying Dream’s face. “You look… cleaner.”

“He took care of it for me,” Dream says, eyes darting back to George as if testing whether Niki knows his name. She gives an understanding hum and walks closer, slamming the ice pack into his hands.

“I should tell Arla about this,” she says sternly. “I should, but I’m not going to, because she’s under enough stress and this isn’t going to make it any better for her.”

“I’ve never known you to make Arla’s life easier for her,” Dream says.

“Maybe I’ve just had a change of heart,” she says. “Or maybe I want to make your life more difficult specifically. Please be more careful, Clay. Will you promise me you’ll be more careful?” 

“Yes, I promise you I’ll be more careful,” he says irritably, and Niki narrows her eyes at him. 

“And you aren’t just saying this for me,” she says. “You know this. You know who else you are saying this for.” 

An uneasy look takes over Dream’s face. He steps away from George. “I know.” 

“When you’re finished, come speak to your mother,” she says, but pauses before she opens the door to leave again. She looks at George, giving a slight incline of her head. He responds with his own nod in her direction.

“Like she’s a fucking messenger girl on horseback or something,” Dream says, when she’s left. “She’s right, though. I should go apologize to my mom. And her husband. Unfortunately.”

“Unfortunately,” George echoes. His brain won’t quiet. There’s only one way to ensure people will always talk about you. “What did she mean, when she told you to be careful?”

“It’s nothing,” Dream says. He slides past George in an attempt to get to the door, but then George grabs his shoulder, making him freeze in his tracks.

“Tell me,” George says. “Does she mean with Baker? Or with—” 

_ Me? _

Dream looks at him. “Please don’t ask me questions I can’t answer,” he says, in a quiet voice. “I’m too scared I’ll answer.”

The door squeaks shut behind him. 


	8. SCRYERS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I can tell when things are bad for me. I could stop—this—anytime I wanted to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote all of this when i had no electricity for a day fml

George has his first press conference a few mornings later, when his bruise has healed enough that he just looks slightly tired from a distance instead of like he’s been punched in the face. He’s holding a manila file of documents Wallace faxed him just in case they’re useful to look through, but it’s mostly so that he has something to tap his nails against as cameras flash against his face.

The only good part is that they don’t know his name. He was never in the foreground, even back home—he likes melting against backdrops and whispering words into his supervisors’ ears, not talking loudly about things he doesn’t understand.

But this isn’t his department. He doesn’t know the press here, doesn’t know their cameras or the chattering words between their teeth, and they don’t know him—which means they’ll do anything to find out who he is. They’re sharks everywhere and George hates them everywhere. He keeps his head down until he finally hears someone say his name.

“Detective Davidson!” A young man with tired eyes and stubble calls out, finally, and George snaps his head up, mentally wishing he’d let Alvarez take over. The mumble rises to a painful halt as the rest of the journalists catch on, and then it’s a stampede of _Detective Davidson Detective Davidson_ , his title then his last name, until he looks over at Baker and he gives him a slow nod.

He stands up. “Order, please, or I’ll be asking Detective Davidson to leave.” He stands and bangs his hands onto the desk loudly, from where they’re sitting at the raised platform of the press conference room. “Thank you. If you have any questions, you can direct them to Sergeant Alvarez and the rest of the investigators on the murder investigation.” 

“Detective Davidson, do you have any comments on why you refuse to investigate high-profile murders in other states?” The same young man says. George snatches his eyes towards him, feeling his pulse rise to his skin. They shouldn’t know that. 

They shouldn’t know _anything_ , when he thinks about it, because any publicity on the murder investigation’s front is bad publicity, no matter how much the Art unit thinks it will distract Saint Don, for the time being. “How did you know that?” He asks sharply, even as Alvarez and Baker give him an identical judgemental look. The young man looks taken aback.

“It’s all over the British news,” he says. “Do you have any comments to make on the matter?”

“I’m a specialist in Orlando until it comes time for the investigation to move,” George says tiredly, and they fall onto each other into another tirade. He should’ve seen it coming, really—the F.B.I. saw Baker get swallowed whole at his dinner party, and the only way he can bounce back is by making sure his department gets their shit done. So far, it seems to be only for the good—last George was updated, Darryl had cracked some cold case the Lennox murder had opened up for him. Other things are not so fantastic for Baker, but George figures he had it coming.

He feels his thumb glide over his phone obsessively, but when he checks it, it’s still empty of messages. Dream hasn’t tried to call him or text him since the party, and he hasn’t been in his house either—he’s gone with the fucking wind, as far as George is concerned. He doesn’t know why his head aches at the thought. 

Just one message. It’s not hard. Even if he’s asleep, or back in Miami, or in jail—it hasn’t stopped him from trying to reach George before.

He could be dead in a ditch, and then George—he’d be just about as dead in a ditch. He can feel Dream’s fingerprints on him every time he shifts in his seat. First step to fixing a problem is admitting you have said problem and all of that. 

He looks over at Baker. His face has paled into a white sheet.

“The department’s collision with organized crime is pending investigation,” he keeps saying. That’s what he’d said the other morning— _pending investigation_. Like it was necessary; like it’s a recent thing that’ll impact his life. He even says it with the affected snivel. The department’s been filthy for so long that trying to fix anything would be like trying to pry off an infected nail with rusty pliers. 

Alvarez is the one to call the end of the conference, and she does it with a tug at George’s elbow. “I want you in the box for J.G.,” she says into his ear, but he flinches away from her mouth before he can think of an excuse to not go inside. He keeps thinking about the way the journalist had looked at him: like he would be an idiot to not know what he was talking about.

“I need a second,” he tells her, even when he trails behind her into the entrance to Violent Crimes. It’s just as overrun with their worker ants, who George has come to sort of be endeared by—sometimes they think he’s a fellow beat officer and hand him paperwork to shuffle to Alyssa or Hank or Darryl. He usually does it, just because it’s always better than being badgered by the Art unit. “I think—I think I have to make a call. I’m sorry, I just need to find out what they’re saying back home.”

“It’s fine,” she tells him. “I’ll try and find a recording. Let me know what Wallace says.”

It kind of feels like a peace treaty, when he walks outside and lights his cigarette and picks up his phone. Or like being let off the hook by a teacher. He tries to focus on calling Wallace, but his eyes keep catching on the horizon, on the tongues of cars swerving down the winding street—because he swears one of them is slowing down, a Range Rover he recognizes quite plainly.

It looks like Niki’s car. He’s seen it parked outside of the department every time he’s walked out and passed her with a goodbye. But he’d know if it was Niki’s car. He’d see Niki, and the little mushroom decal she has on her window. And if it’s Niki’s car, that always leaves the margin of possibility—no matter how small—

The car speeds up and turns at the corner. George doesn’t want to feel the— _disappointment_ , but he has no other word for the anxiety digging holes against his throat. Like every time he swallows his own spit he’s scalding himself. 

He inhales smoke until it stops hurting and tries not to think about Dream, but it’d be easier to die.

His mental strength is on strong enough legs to find Wallace’s contact. They’re in constant communication about the case, which is why he doesn’t know why Wallace wouldn’t tell him about what they’ve leaked to the press. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” he says immediately, when Wallace picks up the phone. The commotion George hears behind him clues him in on Wallace still being in the office.

“You’re fine, you’re fine,” he says. “I hope everything is going well, Davidson.”

_It’s going spectacularly_ , George wants to tell him. _Just being bugged and followed around by federal agents and getting rammed by the Violent Crimes unit and obsessing over a gambler who doesn’t care if I live or die. I’m having the time of my life._ “I can’t complain. Listen, I’m sorry to skip the pleasantries, but I’m interested in what you’ve broadcasted to the press? As I’ve just been questioned by _American_ news about—things completely out of my control.”

“Trust me when I say there was no _broadcasting_ involved,” Wallace says dryly. “After we started looking into links with drug cartels, it’s become—chaotic, around the unit.” When George doesn’t say anything, he keeps talking. “You have to understand that we had no other choice. This manhunt’s been at the forefront of national news for _months_ , and the newshounds were getting antsy. You know what it’s like. We had to say something. Especially now.”

“Okay,” George says. 

“This is a good thing, George,” Wallace says. “I know it might make the local investigation difficult, but the F.B.I. is insistent in making sure high-profile murders are properly investigated. This could be good for you. We could get you out of Orlando.”

George doesn’t say anything. “I’m not finished here.” 

“If the Backus isn’t still in the state—” Wallace says, but George cuts him off. “I’m not finished here, Wallace.” 

He hangs up after that. He realizes he hasn’t ashed his cigarette yet, and when he does it burns his fingers. He’ll move when the case requires him to move. Not when Wallace decides he’s had enough of only interacting with George through the phone. It might be shitty, and he might have to pull his feet out of the dried cement, but he’s done harder things. 

He tries to spend a few more minutes outside, but even he can tell he’s testing Alvarez’s patience. When he finally goes back inside, reeking of smoke and pity, he sees Alyssa, who gives him a tiny nod into the direction of the interrogation room. He doesn’t look to see who’s inside before pushing in.

“—travel? I mean, come on. I’m a free man, I’ve got a right to travel,” J.G. says. He doesn’t look over at George at first, and Alvarez sends him a look, something like, _this dude fucking sucks_ , which George empathizes with on a fundamental level. “And I had _no idea_ that street wasn’t legit. On God. I just wrote down what my British nana told me. Bless her heart.” 

“So you’re claiming it’s a complete coincidence the street where your grandmother lives has the same name as your boss?” Alvarez asks sharply. J.G. groans like it’s something they’ve been over before. His lawyer, a woman with a bun of dark hair, is completely silent. 

“I’ve been telling you, lady, you need to make sure that’s his real name before asking me that,” J.G. says. “He’s a slippery dude. Slippery, slippery.” He looks over at George, and his mouth curls into a smile. “Oh. It’s _Dream’s_ favorite.” 

George doesn’t have time to watch Alvarez react, so he just says, “If you know anything about the murder, it’s in your best interest to tell us now before Art Crime moves in.”

“Woah, woah, woah,” J.G. drawls. He rustles at his handcuffs. “You’re a _cop_ now? Don’t break my heart and tell me you were a cop all along, George, we’ve had so many good times together, man. And you don’t want to break Dream’s heart, do you?”

“What is he talking about?” The lawyer says sharply. 

“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” George says impatiently. He slams his hands down in front of the desk. “I’m going to say this once and I’m going to make myself quite clear. Based on our murder investigation, and based on what my colleagues in the F.B.I. have told me about you, the only way you can avoid the charge of theft of major artwork would be to tell Sergeant Alvarez everything you know about Paragon USA.”

J.G. doesn’t say anything. And then his lips curl like a split muscle. “Really?” He says, looking around them all as if waiting for a punchline. “I’m supposed to take offers from _you_ , when you’re full of so much shit it’s leaking out of your mouth? Fucking please. What were you saying, doll? Do you never smile or what?” 

“He’s right,” Alvarez says quietly. There’s no doubt in her voice, none in either J.G. or in George, which is the truly surprising part. He’s going to get decimated outside. “The art investigation is separate from the murder charge, but the Orlando department itself has its priorities.” 

“I’m sorry, why is he even being accused of stealing the A.E. Backus painting?” The lawyer snaps, her patience obviously waning. “Arla Lowery’s evidence about my client being the thief is inherently flawed. It assumes he not only orchestrated the theft, but he used the same car for the murder as—what, some strange attempt at covering up his tracks?”

“I’m not smart enough for that,” J.G. adds unhelpfully. 

“Arla Lowery is a witness, not a suspect of the investigation,” Alvarez says. George snatches his head towards her at the same time that the lawyer sends her a look—that’s news to them both, certainly. “She was the reason we were able to identify you as a British citizen, and the U.K. is working to link you to the theft as we speak. We only have two tiny issues in our murder investigation—we can’t be sure about Carter Page, and we can’t be sure about the cocaine. It’s a simple decision for you, John-Gabriel.” 

He looks at them. The laughter has drained from his face. “I don’t know,” he says, voice quiet. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.” 

“You’ll give us a moment,” the lawyer says, in the pause where George can hear J.G.’s heavy breathing. Alvarez inclines her head and stands up, motioning towards the exit. George has no other option but to follow her—cursing J.G., cursing the crooked department, cursing himself. They watch the lawyer whisper frantically for a while for a while before Alvarez speaks again.

“I think we got him,” she says. 

“You’ve really let Lowery off the hook?” George asks her. She couldn’t have—she _wouldn’t_. Everything was riding on convicting Arla Lowery—everything still rides on her being the one with her fingers on the puppet strings. Losing her as a suspect feels like a mirage George has lost in the desert. “I know—I know it’s her. I can feel it.” 

“You can’t feel it,” Alvarez says. “You’re supposed to know it. Without a shadow of a doubt.” She waits for George to fight back, but he feels too small and he feels too sick. “Who told you she was behind the art crimes?”

“No one,” George says. “I mean—my—the person I was talking to. He didn’t tell me anything outright, but he said she’d traveled a lot and that she had a stop in Orlando.”

“I don’t know how much they told you about the passport,” Alvarez says, “But it was an anonymous tip.”

That’s even worse. He wants to tell her how much he dreads the thought of convicting someone with even less leads than her, that they should trace the tip and find out who’s so desperate to break Arla out of holding—even though he has a few guesses of his own. “So someone’s looking out for her.”

“It’s not a bad thing,” Alvarez says. “It makes things easier for us. Especially when J.G. gets involved.” 

“But, I mean—when you think about the fact that I saw her in one of Saint Don’s clubs, and the fact that I heard Saint Don talking about transporting the art—” George doesn’t know where to go from there, head pounding against his words. “What the fuck else was I supposed to think?”

“You’re keeping your ear pretty close to the ground, George,” Alvarez says, instead of responding. “Almost too close.” 

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” George says. 

“I’m _saying_ —” she starts, but then her face drops and she shifts her entire body, turning her face into his, eyebrows furrowed spectacularly, “—That if you’re fucking around with Saint Don’s boys, if you’re keeping in touch with them or if you’re befriending them or if you’re _sleeping_ with them, God forbid, you ought to be very, very careful. Very fucking careful.”

“I—” George sputters, voice catching in his throat. “I’m not—”

“I don’t know what you’re doing,” Alvarez says, turning back around to look through the window. “I can’t be sure. None of us can be sure. Hank and Darryl might believe you when you tell them you’re abiding by the law, but Hank and Darryl get to move on to another case once this one goes cold, and they get to forget who you are when you go back to England. You and I don’t have the luxury of pretending like everything’s okay.” 

And it hits George in the chest like a battering ram. “I’m just doing what I have to do. I can promise you that.”

“Me, too,” Alvarez murmurs, eyes unfocused and glazed over. “I haven’t been completely honest with you. Or anyone.” She shifts her face over to George again. “But I think that’s okay. As long as we both know we’re keeping secrets.”

“Yeah,” George says, even though he’s sick of secrets. “Yeah, that’s fine. I… in there, when he said I knew Dream—”

“I don’t know who that is, and I don’t want to hear about it,” Alvarez says abruptly. “Even if he’s some bystander you’re scalping for information. Even if he’s helping you get your job done. As long as you remember to use and forget—I have no room to tell you what to do. And neither does the Baker.” She laughs a little, to herself. “Him, least of all.” 

So he’s not the only one who’s been sneaking around under the department’s nose. Even so, he doubts that Alvarez has been spending her evenings with the same criminal nights in a row. “I’m being careful.” 

“Good,” Alvarez says. “That’s all I ask for.” They watch J.G. lift his cuffed hands over the table; they’re rubbed pink where the metal meets his skin. “I’m not a bad person, George. I wouldn’t tell you that J.G. is at Carter Page’s apartment tonight, even if I knew that he was.”

“What?” George says. “How do you know that?”

“And I wouldn’t even ask any questions if you talked to him, outside of work,” she continues, like he hadn’t even spoken. This feels worse than George’s regular sneaking around—this feels like plotting. This feels like something she could use against him. “I wouldn’t even know if you did. I wouldn’t ask you to update me.”

George would like to think he has two decisions in this situation, but he doesn’t, really. He can’t ignore Alvarez. He can’t ignore any of them anymore. “Noted.” 

“They’re taking a long time,” she says, and looks at him. “I’m going to go back inside.”

George doesn’t follow.

**

Of course he listens. Of course he fucking listens. Because all he does is let people yank him around, tell him what to do, solve their mysteries for them for a smidge of gratitude. He should be embarrassed by it, really, by how obsessed he can get with problems that aren’t his, but that’s the result of having a fucked-up brain that he fucked up himself and can’t stop fucking up—

“Are you sure you want me to drop you off here?” Hank asks.

“What?” George says, and looks down at his phone to match the address with the apartment building. It’s closer to Hank’s than the house he’s staying in, which is why he didn’t think it would be a problem to ask for a ride, but there’s always the part where he has to explain himself. “Oh. Yeah. It’s cool. Proctor just wants me to check something out.”

“I could wait for you, if you want,” Hank offers, but George waves him off instantly. 

“It’s already late,” he says. He’d stayed a bit longer to help Darryl type up a report, so the orange sky has already dulled dark. Perfect for the rest of his night, if it goes well enough that he’ll want to remember it. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll call an Uber or something. Hey—did you ever talk to that girl again? From when we went down to Miami?” 

Hank looks confused, for a second, and then his face clears up with the memory. “You mean Vica,” he says. “I mean… no. She lives in Miami, George.”

“So?” George asks. “Not like you’re never going to go there again.” 

“Right, but she— _lives_ in _Miami_ , you know?” Hank says, putting pressure on the words. He taps his fingers against the steering wheel nervously. ““I don’t know. She’s kind of a wild card, I guess. And it’s not that I’m judging her or anything, but—I’m so over not dating for stability. Maybe I want the fucked-up fantasy where you live in an affordable apartment with a dog and you don’t cheat on each other and everything is really nice.” He doesn’t speak for a moment, evidently thinking about something, something distant from George that will continue even after he leaves. “And she just—doesn’t. And that’s okay.”

“You can still be attracted to her, though,” George says. That’s always been his argument—about most things, when he thinks about it. There’s always shades of gray. “It’s not like it flushes all of your morals down the toilet. It’s just—you think she’s pretty. Like, really pretty. And even when you think about her a lot, it’s, like—so what? It’s one memory. Imagine how fucked up people would be if they thought they were in love with everyone they had a good memory with.” 

“I mean, yeah, people don’t do that,” Hank says. “Which means that… when they stop thinking about the memory, they stop thinking about the person. Your thing sounds kind of different.”

George is silent. “I didn’t think about that.” 

“Caught you,” Hank says, looking supremely pleased with himself. “What’s her name?” 

“I’m not talking about anyone,” George says, and he isn’t even lying, because Dream doesn’t count. He’s barely even comparable. Thinking about him is a matter of necessity. “Or—it doesn’t—it’s not really the same. Okay. I’m digging myself into a very deep hole here.”

“This conversation isn’t over,” Hank says, and unlocks his doors pointedly. “10-23, detective.” 

George waves a goodbye at his car until he’s sure Hank doesn’t see him break into the back exit. In his defense, it’s not technically breaking in because the door to the basement is left propped open, and an older man carrying groceries nods at him when he slips into the elevator. It’s definitely against some building code, but the bigger problem relevant to him would be finding the fucking apartment.

He looks at himself in the reflection of his phone—he’s taken off his tie, but his eyes are still bloodshot and streaked over with veins like he’d been crying. He rubs at them furiously until the elevator dings onto the third floor.

It’s a gamble from there, ambling through the stairwell in a way that will make him seem less suspicious and more in a rush to do something important. When he’s finally up on the fifth floor—out of six, thankfully—he peeks down the hallway to the sight of his first open door, a dirty white sneaker peeking out from the corner. It vanishes quickly, and he adjusts at his hair nervously before walking down.

The cheap carpeting rustles under his feet, and he grimaces, lifting on his tip-toes so that the person won’t hear him. He stands next to the door, the two voices whispering at each other clearing up as he flattens his back against the wall. 

“You really think this is a good idea?” An unfamiliar voice asks, tense with contained quiet. J.G. gives a grunt, and his white shoe peeks out of the door again: it’s filthy, with brown gunk deep in the creases. 

“I don’t think it’s a _good_ idea, but it’s the only one we’ve got,” he says. “I’m tellin’ you, man. Cops are gonna start sniffing around soon.” 

“You don’t know that,” the voice says. “God, how long has that old fuck been letting Don pimp out his mansion for him? I say it’s a test of loyalty. If nobody comes around to ask questions about the casino, we’ll know the Lieutenant’s on our side no matter what.” 

“Real romantic,” J.G. says. “We’re not the only ones with friends on the inside, you know.”

“Oh yeah?” the other man says. “Who else?” 

“There’s this fucking cop I’ve seen around the club before,” J.G. says. “Some guy that hangs with Dream. I don’t know who’s playing who, but I’m thinkin’ about telling my lawyer what I know about him.”

“Go for it,” the other man says. “Especially if Dream knows. He’ll probably back you up. You’d think he hates that department more than anyone, for some reason.”

“Damn right,” J.G. says. “Nah, I don’t know. He got kinda bitchy about it. Told me to stay out of his business. But when have I let _that_ fucking dude push me around before?” 

The other man laughs. “S’long as he’s staying quiet and he’s doing what people tell him to do, I don’t care what Dream does.” 

“That’s my problem, though,” J.G. says. “You never know who he’s going to lead to the clubs. The casinos. One cop, I get, but then they’re gonna start piling up—and then when they do come around and start to figure shit out, then what?” 

George knows what.

“Don’ll do what he always does, man,” the other voice says. 

“Yeah, but _then_ what?” J.G. says persistently. “They might be off our asses for now, but if their Lieutenant goes missing, what happens? They come in, they find out what we’ve been doing, we get fifty-to-life for murder and art theft and drug trafficking. Is that what you want?” 

_Holy shit. Holy fucking shit._ “You’re fucking with my words, J, and you know you are,” the other voice snaps back, ending on a grunt as he must move something heavy. “They won’t find out about the art. You’re stressing too much. That wasn’t even our _business_ , man, we was just—close enough to help. Pay cut wasn’t too bad either.” 

“Y’know the feds are here,” J.G. tells him. “And it’s just for that. That stupid fucking painting.” 

The other man snorts. “The feds could come retire in a suburb in Jacksonville for all I care. They can’t figure out jack shit about the art while Baker’s cops run their way around this god damn murder. And they need _our_ help for that. They’re not going to do anything stupid.” 

George wants to bang his head against the wall. He’d almost prefer it if Proctor spit in his face and said _I told you so_. Even so, he can’t help the edge of doubt that creeps into his thoughts—they may let their guards down about the art crime, but there’s no reason they’d loosen up about their drug trade. 

That shouldn’t be his problem. But the drug trade is the center of everything they are, and if they actually manage to put Saint Don in prison for that, it’ll be a good thing—not just for the people fucked over by his dealers, but for the people fucked over by him _personally_. Very personally. Personally to the point of leaving their cars as gambling collateral, for example. 

It’s not like Dream would do the same for him, but he can’t be bothered with feeling pathetic. Especially when he’d already admitted to himself that he has a problem. 

“That’s the thing,” J.G. says. “We don’t know what they’re going to do. So let’s just plant the coke, make sure his body’s in the same place, and be on our merry way. All right?” 

“Fine,” the other man says gruffly. “This better work. I’m gonna be real pissed off if it doesn’t work.”

“It’ll work,” J.G. snaps. “That lady lawyer told me I gotta admit I know Page is dead soon. And once I help them match the shipment of this coke to the one in the car—it’ll be real easy to make them think he did it.” He lets out a laugh. “God damn. Look at me. I’m some fucking bootlicking cop-helper now. It’s kinda fun.”

“You like being a citizen of the law, J.G.?” The other man asks, and then they keep up their negging for a few minutes longer, treading around the apartment in their dirty white shoes. George sniffs the air, but it doesn’t smell like a dead body. And it doesn’t smell like coke, either, the heavy metallic smell that comes with those giant shipments of it. 

“If you’ve got this handled, man, I’m gonna be off,” The other man says. George’s heart rate spikes, and he heads down to the stairwell immediately. He busies himself with pretending to have just undone his tie when he first catches sight of the man.

He’s heavyset, powerful, and he gives George a tiny nod when they pass each other on the stairwell, as George goes up a level and listens to him stomp his way down to the exit. He doesn’t recognize him from anywhere, and he doesn’t want to. He resigns himself to heading back down to Page’s apartment until he hears the elevator start chugging. 

He knows what Alvarez said about ignoring gut feelings, but it’s impossible to ignore the curling in his stomach. He waits until the elevator comes to a loud halt, and he hears extra footsteps on the carpet. Either the person isn’t trying to hide that they’re going inside—which is pretty good news for George and the cases he’s currently blowing out of the water—or even _George’s_ footsteps were that loud.

J.G. doesn’t say anything. All George sees is the closing of the door behind him, as he traps himself in with the cocaine. He waits, in a trembling silence, for the anonymous man to make himself known—but he doesn’t. He closes his eyes and listens instead of looking. 

He thinks he hears the man grab the doorknob. He thinks he hears him go inside, because J.G. starts to say something loudly, quickly muffled by a sudden cry of pain. George opens his eyes and moves out of the stairwell hurriedly, walking towards the open door, pressing himself against the wall again. 

It’s not anything about his case, but it’s something he’s going to want to listen in for.

“I’m—fucking—ow!” J.G. yelps, and the new man says, “Shut the fuck up, I don’t want to hear it,” and George realizes with a start that he _knows_ that voice. He’s heard that voice. He thinks about that voice when his mind goes empty. The only question now is what the fuck Dream thinks he’s _doing_ here, in a stranger’s apartment building at eleven o’clock at night, making J.G. make those sounds—sounds George shouldn’t be surprised by. 

He doesn’t think Dream’s a rough person. He’s never given George any indication that he’s a rough person. But maybe—and just maybe, because he doesn’t know how much he wants to accept it—that could be a lie. And if that’s a lie—

_No_ , something in George’s mind thinks.

It fills him with the same fear that he had the first time he tried the pills. The first time he snorted instead of swallowed and it filled his veins like it was his natural state of self—calm and loose and free, so completely free, free from the thoughts and the things and the people. He’d thought _this is going to ruin me_ and the tiny voice had said _no. It’s not. Or—if it does—you’re not going to mind at all_.

He hears it again when Dream hits J.G. again, and he must shove something in his mouth, because his cries go quieter and quieter with every loud thump of Dream’s shoe against his stomach. 

_No_ , the voice says again. He needs to move. J.G. isn’t just his suspect—he’s multiple people’s suspect, and they could nail him for so many charges he’ll have to snitch on every last person he knows just so he can still breathe fresh air when they put him in jail, but he has to be alive for that. He can’t be in prison if he’s a pile of guts and bones. He can’t speak on the witness stand if he’s gargling his own blood on the ground. George tries to move, but something pushes him against the chest. 

He’s stopped Dream before. It would take one word. And Dream would listen to him because nobody else speaks to him like they expect him to listen. But still—even so—George steps back against the wall and pushes his sleeve against his mouth. 

“I fucking told you—I told you so many times, and what do you go and do?” Dream spits. Maybe his voice hadn’t been so familiar after all. It sounds like he’s injected it with something. Something harsh and painful. “You try to rat him out. Well, try this, motherfucker—if you ever, and I mean _ever_ , so much as speak the first sound in his name, I’m going to rip you apart limb by fucking limb until you forget what God you’re supposed to pray to.” J.G. gives a pitiful moan in response. “Am I making myself clear?” 

“Fucking—fucking piece of shit,” J.G. coughs out, his voice ending on a high-pitched squeal when Dream kicks him again. “ _Fuck_! This is why—nobody will ever fucking love you, Dream, you stupid fucking—obsessive little—Don never should’ve—“

“What? Don never should have _what_? Helped me?” Dream says. “I never needed his help. I just knew he would be useful to what I needed to do. And look—it looks like you need his help a lot more than me right now.”

“They ought to rid the fucking world of you, I swear,” J.G. wheezes. “Three billion women on this Earth and you’re kicking my ass for some British fuck who doesn’t—who doesn’t even know your fucking _name_ . You think he cares about you at all, Dream? He’s a fucking cop. He’s been a cop the entire time. Yeah, he’s been a cop this entire fucking time, and I bet you didn’t even know.” Dream doesn’t say anything, and J.G. gives a pitiful laugh—it sounds like it hurts him. “Or, maybe you _did_ know, and you’re so fuckin’ desperate for someone to just look at you like you’re normal for once that you’d—settle for _anything_. He’d make you beg at his feet for his attention and you’d do it.” 

“You don’t know the first fucking thing about me,” Dream says. George realizes, with dawning horror, that his voice has gone smaller. Like he’s listening. He shouldn’t be listening. He should be knocking J.G.’s teeth in. 

“Everyone can see it on your face, y’fucking moron,” J.G. says. “The way you bring him around everywhere like he’s going to protect you. Well, guess what? Welcome to the real world, where cops only care about cops and putting people like you and me in jail. You’ll never mean _anything_ to him.”

“George is my friend, shithead, _”_ Dream snarls. “You think I’d settle for a _cop_? Are you fucking serious? You really don’t know me at all.” He pauses, and then spits. J.G. gives a huff of disgust. “He’s a better person than you’ll ever be, that’s for sure.”

“Oh, who gives a shit if he’s fucking Mother Teresa? We’ve got the same fucking job—me and you and him. We’re all swindling innocent people who just _don’t deserve the treatment they get_ ,” J.G. says, putting on an affected snivel that’s rudely interrupted by Dream kicking him in the stomach. “ _Fuck_ , you fucking asshole! What, it hurt too much to know you’re ruining the world? Well I’ll fucking tell you because _he_ won’t—“

“I wanted this to be easy,” Dream says. “I wanted this to be so, so easy for you, John-Gabriel. I’d make my point, and we could move on like nothing ever happened. You’d pretend you didn’t know anything, and we could go back to eating burgers in the back alley of the Glacier.” 

“You’re such a little prick,” J.G. says. “I wish I’d never gotten to know you. You’re going to Hell, Dream, ‘m gonna fucking—“ he coughs again, “—make sure of it.”

“Hope that works out for you,” Dream says. “I really didn’t want to get other people involved.”

“Oh, yeah?” J.G. sneers. “Like who?”

“Like Miss Margaret O’Conner who moved into your studio recently,” Dream says. J.G.’s labored breathing goes impossibly thicker. “Aw, what’s wrong, J.G.? You don’t like it that I know her name?” 

“Your problem isn’t with _her_ , you piece of shit,” J.G. says. “It’s with me. You think you’re such a big man with these pristine fucking morals, you leave my wife out of this.” 

“Oh, so you finally tied the knot?” Dream says, with mocking delight. “Why wasn’t I invited to the wedding? You know who I would’ve brought as my plus-one?” He does something that makes J.G. hack out a wet cough. “I don’t think she’d like it if you died.” 

“Saint Don wouldn’t like it so much if I died, either,” J.G. says. 

“He wouldn’t mind if _she_ died, though,” Dream says. “He wouldn’t mind if I put a bullet in her skull. He wouldn’t even know. Unless they’re still fucking when you’re out in Miami?” 

“Fuck you,” J.G. says. “It was once. Fucking once. Margie loves me.” 

“She does?” Dream asks. “That’s so cute. I’m so happy for you. And you can’t live without her, right?” 

“Stop,” J.G. says weakly. It sounds like he’s fading. “Stop what you’re—“

“And it would be so, so hard to continue on in this world if she wasn’t on it anymore, right?” Dream interrupts, voice dropping to a stage-whisper. “And you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if she died, right?”

“ _Enough_ ,” J.G. chokes out. “Oh my God, _enough_ , Dream, enough. You’re a sadist. You’re a fucking sadist. God… Jesus, if you’re… if you’re listening…“

“Oh, I’m not a sadist, trust me,” Dream says. “Quite the opposite, if we’re talking about the things we like. ‘Cause this hurts me to _do_ , J.G. I told you I didn’t want to do this. But when you come into the club, talking about how Dream’s friend’s been a cop the entire time and snitching on him just might be your way out, what else am I supposed to do?” 

“You’re supposed to side with the guy who’s been helping you the entire time,” J.G. says. “Who’s been doing your dirty work for you.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” Dream says. “Glad we could agree.” J.G. doesn’t say anything. “So we’re good? I won’t have to kill Margie in front of you?”

“Don’t call her that,” J.G. gasps. “Fuck, I’m—fuck you. Fuck.”

Dream kicks him again. “You’re gonna stay quiet?”

“As a mouse, man,” J.G. says. “As a mouse.” 

“And don’t think Don doesn’t know about this,” Dream says. “You can try and tell him who beat your face in, if you want, but don’t be surprised when he says he already knows.” He clears his throat. “Good luck cleaning yourself up in here.” 

“I hope you bite that cop’s dick off when you suck it,” J.G. says. 

Dream laughs, and then walks outside. He closes the door. He sees George.

His nails have been clenched into his palms for so long that when he looks down at his hands there’s red bruises in his palms. The wall digs into his shoulder-blades, and when he lifts his tongue out of his mouth he tastes blood on his lips, his teeth streaked over with it and his brain bleeding with it. 

Something happens. One of the side of George’s brain stops fighting. He can feel it lowering its defenses until he’s filled with the same guilty acceptance he had the first time he used again after rehab. _You didn’t stop him_ , he thinks numbly. _It wasn’t fight-or-flight. It wasn’t fear. You didn’t stop him because you didn’t want to stop him_.

“George,” Dream says, finally. His eyes are glassy. George realizes they’re filled with tears. 

“Fuck,” George says quietly, and turns around. He walks down the hallway, up the spiraling staircase he’d started at earlier, pushes through the door to the roof, and walks out. He doesn’t ever turn to see if Dream is behind him, because he knows he is. 

It’s not as humid outside. The night’s cooled, albeit slightly. It’s finally October, and the air kind of smells like grass. George shoves his hands into his pockets and finds his box of cigarettes. He’s down to three in his carton. He unearths one from the box and flips on his lighter, shielding it from the barely-there breeze, lighting the tip until it stings at the places where he’s bitten through at his lips. 

He’s not a violent person. He’d thought he’d come into this job because he’s a good person. He’d thought there was still something left in him he could save by himself. He ashes the cigarette over the roof, until Dream gives one tiny, pitiful, “ _George_ —“ 

“Why did you do that?” George whispers, to himself. If there was still something good left in him he could save, he wanted to do it by himself. He wanted it to be something he could be proud of. He wanted to nurture it and raise it and flaunt it to the world. _I am inherently good._ “Please don’t tell me it was for me, Dream.” 

Dream doesn’t say anything. George squeezes his eyes shut.

“Please don’t tell me it was for me,” he says, voice raw. _I am inherently good._ “Please don’t tell me you threatened a woman’s life for me.” 

“That’s not what that was,” Dream says. “It wasn’t. I swear.”

And then he turns around. Dream blots at his eyes with his palm and then drops his arms at his sides like that’ll keep George from being able to tell what he’s doing. He walks closer and ashes on Dream’s boots; they’re covered in J.G.’s blood. He thinks he sees a tooth nudged between the laces. “You wouldn’t do something like that for me.” 

“It wasn’t for—“ Dream says, voice ending on a quiver. “Not like you think. It wasn’t—what he said in there, it’s—he’s a piece of shit, all right? He was just saying whatever it took to get a rise out of me. I’ve never thought about you like that.” 

“Okay,” George says.

“I swear,” Dream says persistently. “I barely even think about—dudes like that. Point is, he was trying to—he was trying to mess with you, okay? And I can’t afford that. At this point, if you go down, I’m going down too. I’m just trying to save my own ass.” 

_You could do whatever you wanted to to him_ , the tiny voice tells him, and George has to shake his head, bring his cigarette up to his mouth. “He said he helped you.”

“I didn’t know what he was talking about,” Dream says. He’s lying. George doesn’t know how he’s never noticed it before. The way his teeth don’t show up all the way and point out in tiny fangs; the way he tilts his head to the side and brushes a trembling hand over his hair; the way he picks at the nail at his thumb with his forefinger. “I swear.” 

George puts a hand on his cheek. His skin is soft and feels like velvet. 

“Dude, what are you _doing_?” Dream squeaks. 

George runs his finger along the underside of his eye, catching the wetness of his tears. “You were crying.”

“Not crying,” Dream says. “Just—I—I didn’t want you to see me like that. I wasn’t expecting for you to be here, is all.” 

“I was,” George says. _Just say whatever you want to say to me. Just say it. I need to hear it so I know what to do next. I need you to prove what I think I know._ “I heard a lot.” 

“I don’t know what you think you heard—“ Dream says, but then George brushes his thumb over his bottom lip, and Dream stops breathing, there, and he lets George slip his thumb between his lips, run it along the bottom of his mouth where it’s wet and dark. 

He pushes down, and Dream slackens his jaw wider, _wider_ , until George says, softly, “Stick out your tongue,” and Dream listens. 

He takes a final hit of his cigarette, dampens it out on his thigh, and then puts it out. He’s not gentle, but he doesn’t screw it in. When Dream grimaces, he moves the cigarette to a different spot, and then another one and another one and another one, until it’s wet and he drops it under his foot and tramples it into the ground.

“Ow, first of all,” Dream says. There’s burn marks on his tongue that make his voice thick, but they hadn’t hurt him. George isn’t a total sadist. Unlike some people.

“You have to fucking stop letting me do these things to you,” George says. “I’m serious. This is so bad. This is so bad for you.” 

“I’m not an idiot,” Dream says, even as he touches at the places where George had fucked up his tongue. “I can tell when things are bad for me. I could stop— _this_ —anytime I wanted to.”

George’s laugh sounds more like a dry sob. “Is that what I sound like when I say those things?”

“Say what things?” Dream says, and then realizes. “Fuck _,_ George, that’s not what this is.”

“It sounds like that’s what this is,” George says, voice bordering on hysterical. “It sounds like you’d listen to anything I said. It sounds like you’re pulling this bullshit for me even though I didn’t ask for it.” 

“I didn’t ask for it either,” Dream says desperately. “I don’t even know what the fuck I’m _thinking_. At any point in time.” 

“What was he talking about in there?” George says. If he and Dream are this close to jumping off of the roof and saying goodbye to their normal lives forever, he may as well go all out. “You were helping him with something. You were helping him and Saint Don. You’ve been lying to me.”

“Jesus fuck, I haven’t been _lying_ to you,” Dream says. “I just—please, please don’t—“

“Tell me what he was talking about,” George says fiercely, and Dream shakes his head.

“You know I can’t tell you,” he says. “God, please don’t make me tell you, please. I’m so close to it, I could—if you ask me, I’ll tell you, and I can’t tell you. Please don’t make me tell you.” 

“Just tell me,” George says. “I won’t tell anyone. Ever. I’ll keep it to myself. I promise.”

Dream squeezes his eyes shut. He opens them again. 

“I helped,” he says. 

“You helped with what?” George asks. 

“I can’t—“ Dream says, and then looks at him again. “Oh, fuck you. Stop looking at me like that. I shouldn’t even—I have to leave. I have to leave and we have to never talk again.” 

George grabs his wrist. “Please.” 

Dream’s eyes search his face. “The drug hit,” he says, voice barely dipping above a murmur. “It was supposed to be one job. I’ve—helped a bunch of different times, but I’m in _debt_ , man. You wouldn’t know what that’s like unless you were actually in debt with someone like him. And they said it wouldn’t be messy. I could just—do what I usually did, but it would be for a dead body, this time. They didn’t tell me anything about it.”

_I just knew he would be useful to what I needed to do._ George wants to tell him he knows he’s lying, but Dream’s eyes are so full and George’s skin is engulfed in so many flames he thinks he’d believe anything Dream told him. “Okay.” 

Dream’s face changes. “ _Okay_?” 

“Okay,” George repeats. Dream’s eyes never leave his. “Fine. You helped kill someone.”

“That’s not—“ Dream says, but George cuts him off.

“And I’m not going to tell anyone,” he says. “It’s not my investigation.”

Dream still doesn’t look like he believes him, and George doesn’t blame him. All they do is lie to each other. “You don’t have your code of honor or whatever?” 

“Don’t talk about that,” George says, and then breaks eye contact and steps away from him. “Come on. I’m taking you home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know i need to stop writing ppl beating each other up but its so fun im not sorry


	9. BLOOD AND CHLORINE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I wouldn’t have done the things I did if I got to have you in the end.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a lot happens. in this chapter. and it should probably be split into a few different chapters but i got excitwd and made it this giant one
> 
> but im proud of it so maybe its a good thing! enjoy!

It’s hard to sleep, when George knows Dream is awake. He can hear him prowling around the living room like he has some point to prove about being left to his own devices. He’s busy typing up a very heated response to an email chain by the Art and Antiques unit, because even though his eyes are falling shut and even though he could just lock his door so Dream won’t smother him in his sleep, he can’t stop thinking about what an idiot he’s being. The self-loathing is almost as bad as the shame.

Dream knocks on his door. “George?”

“Mm,” George says, eyes still glued to his screen. 

“I can’t sleep,” he says, and walks over. He plops himself onto George’s bed, and then moves his laptop out of the way and drops his head onto his lap. George kind of doesn’t know what to do from there. 

“What are—“ George says, and then Dream mumbles something inaudible and ducks his head into the inside of George’s thigh, shutting his eyes. “Okay. Hi.” 

“Hi,” Dream says. “Did you ever believe in God, when you were little?”

“What?” George asks.

“I like thinking about it, when I can’t sleep,” Dream says. “It’s kind of comforting, I guess. Especially when you’re sleeping alone and stuff. That there really is something way bigger than you that cares about you a lot.” 

George’s hands are still hovering awkwardly over his head, so he just kind of drops them on top of Dream’s hair, fingers fitting against the strands. “That email was important.” 

“What was it about?” Dream asks. 

“Got an anonymous tip for my investigation,” George says. “My department doesn’t want it investigated. I think it’s suspicious.” He watches his own fingers push Dream’s hair off his forehead against his own volition. “I probably shouldn’t tell you anything else.” 

“Cool,” Dream mumbles sleepily, like he hadn’t even heard. “Don’t bother, man. They’re not going to send you a tip again if you try’n find out who sent it.”

Frustration bubbles into George’s stomach. “You don’t know that.” 

“I _do_ know that,” Dream says. “Drop it. C’est la vie. Live your life. Did you believe in God or not?” 

George gives an incredulous laugh, against his better judgement. “I don’t know,” he says. “I didn’t really think about it.” He remembers something: his bedroom, the foot of his bed, a rosary hanging from his lamp. “My mum would make me pray, and she said that if I had any questions for Him, I could ask. But I never had any.”

“Sounds like she just wanted you to leave her alone,” Dream says. 

“Did that too much, really,” George says. He doesn’t think Dream hears, but he breathes like he does. “I think she just wanted to hear me talk.” 

“You never had any questions for God?” Dream asks, a moment later. “Really?” 

“Nah,” George says. “Thought I’d figure them out eventually.” 

“What about the—the fucked-up ones?” He asks, through a yawn. “Like, why do murderers exist and shit?” 

George realizes where he is, for a second—in a bed that isn’t really his with a boy that really isn’t his, a boy who could turn on him the way he turns in his sleep. “I think you could answer that one for me.” 

Dream doesn’t say anything. “You really like asking _me_ questions, for someone who doesn’t like talking to God.” 

“I know you’ll answer,” George says. “I don’t know if He’ll answer. Would be messed up if He answered me instead of old people asking why He gave them cancer or something.” 

Dream hums out an affirmation. “He’d just call them His strongest soldiers or whatever. I don’t really know anyone who’s religious anymore.” 

“I guess it’s kind of hard to be,” George says. “Based on the people you hang around.” 

Dream twists his head to send him a judgemental look. “Like you’re flawless,” he says, but there’s not enough malice to keep his head stable so he just shifts it back into George’s lap. “Nah. It’s not ‘cause it’s hard. There’s just no point. They’ve already got a Saint.” 

George brushes his fingers against his hair again. “ _You’ve_ got a Saint.” 

“He’s nothing to me,” Dream says. “The same way Baker’s nothing to you. I’m sure you do things for him that you wouldn’t want to do otherwise.” 

“Not really,” George says. “I kind of do what I want.” 

“But you don’t,” Dream says, and turns his head around so that he’s looking George in the eyes. “Do you? You don’t really expect me to believe that— _this_ is you doing whatever you want. Like you wouldn’t do more if you had the chance.”

A chill runs down George’s spine. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I _mean_ ,” Dream says, and twists his hand out over George’s ankles to keep him pinned down, “You’ve seen so fucking much, George. You’ve seen what it’s like to— _actually_ do whatever you want. And you’re still telling me this is the life you prefer?” 

George laughs, again, and Dream looks at him, peering into his eyes like he’s trying to look for something he’s lost. He fidgets, uncomfortable under the hand Dream has against his leg, but he doesn’t push it away. Not ever. 

“It _is_ the life I prefer,” he says, instead of anything else. “I’d rather help people. And not die in the process.” 

Dream smiles at him. “It’s not like that, if you know who to stay with.” 

“I doubt that,” George says.

“No,” Dream says persistently. “It’s—okay. Look. I remember, once, there was this sermon I went to with my family, when I was really little, and they were talking about Sodom & Gomorrah, and—you know the story, right? There’s stealing there and killing there and fucking and dying there, but people fuck and die _everywhere_ . That’s all people know how to do. And I remember thinking, like, _well, what’s the point of using them as an example? What’s so special about them that’s different from fucking Jerusalem or whatever? Why doesn’t He strike down any other fucked-up city-state?_ And then I figured it was because they didn’t care. They knew God was watching and they did whatever they wanted.” He leans his head back against George’s knee, closing his eyes. “ _That’s_ doing whatever you want, George. Not listening to a bunch of cops make you some promises.” 

George doesn’t speak, for a while. He doesn’t think that’s what happened to Sodom & Gomorrah. He touches Dream’s neck and feels his Adam’s apple bob against the back of his knuckles. 

“Having morals is important to people,” George says. “I know you think it’s not, but it’s important to people.” 

“I have morals,” Dream says, still with his eyes closed. “Don’t kill kids and don’t fuck with people who haven’t fucked with you first. If you choose a few, it’s easy to live your life without feeling too stifled.”

“I’m not stifled,” George says. 

“Based on the way you touch my mouth, I’d think you’re the most stifled person I’ve ever met,” Dream says. 

George thumbs at Dream’s bottom lip. Dream smiles up at him, moving his head back to the side.

“I’m not letting you off the hook,” George says instead of responding. He just has a nice mouth. That’s all it’s ever been. “I’m not going to let you explain away what you did.”

“I’m not explaining anything,” Dream says. “If you get _anything_ out of the bullshit I say, that’s your fault.” 

That much is true, George supposes. “They’re going to get you in the interrogation room soon. And then you’re going to have to tell me what you know about the art theft.”

“Okay,” Dream says agreeably, and sits up. “But promise me you won’t send me to jail. I’m too pretty for jail.”

“I won’t send you to jail,” George murmurs, kind of ahead of himself, because he knows Dream has the ears of a fucking trickster fairy and what he hears is an honest-to-God promise and not George talking to himself on three hours of sleep and four hours of Dream. “But you have to stop getting in trouble. I’ll have to bring you with me or something.”

“Bring me with you?” Dream says, and leans in, a little. “So you can keep an eye on me? Make sure I’m being a good boy?” His mouth is so close George can feel his breath on his teeth like the cold pinch of ice water. “That’s how you want to spend your time?” 

“You couldn’t be good if your life depended on it,” George says. 

“It does, sometimes,” Dream says, but before George can throw everything he’s been saying out of the window and bite his mouth Dream’s phone rings in his pocket and he shuts his eyes, sucking air in through his teeth and wrangling it out of his pocket.

“That’s not—” George says, not recognizing the shitty phone as the one he’s seen Dream have previously, but Dream just puts a finger over his mouth and stands up off the bed, answering it quickly. George still sees the flash of the caller ID. _Don_. 

“Hey, man, no, I’m not busy,” Dream says, but George stands up and follows him to the doorway, grabbing him by the shoulder and motioning for him to pull his phone down. Dream sends him a death glare, but he listens anyway, wrangling it from his face and clicking the button to put it on speaker. 

“—keep our relations tidy, so I’m hopin’ you’ll accept an apology on his behalf,” Saint Don says, his voice crackling against the receiver. “It’s always been a pleasure doing business with you, lil’ copling. I wouldn’t want some idiot shit-for-brains to fuck up what’s so far been a very lucrative business connection.” 

“Yeah, me neither,” Dream says, a moment later. His voice is shaky. “And don’t… worry. I’ve said what I have to say to J.G., and everything’s good. We’re on the same page now.”

“I’m happy to hear it, Dream,” Saint Don says. “Hey—how’s this: ditch the cop, bring the coke, and come down to the beach house for our celebration on Friday night.”

“What’re you celebrating?” Dream asks. Saint Don barks out a laugh until he realizes Dream’s not joking.  
  


“Eh, pre-Thanksgiving or somethin’,” Saint Don says. 

“I don’t know,” Dream says, eyes darting from his phone to George’s face to somewhere at the back of the room. “I kind of—”

“Need I remind you what you owe me?” Saint Don. Dream grimaces. 

“I mean—okay,” he says, a moment later, and George thinks about telling him he shouldn’t, but that’s a conversation they’ve never had because he knows how it’ll go. “Yeah. Sure. I’ll make it.” 

“Love to hear it,” Saint Don says. “Godspeed, brother.” He hangs up before Dream can, and then Dream is just looking at George with his burner phone still in his hand. He slips it into the back of his jeans awkwardly, looking down at their shoes. 

“Before you say anything,” Dream says, “I know what he said, but—you know you’re going to be there anyway, so you may as well come with me.”

George scoffs out a laugh. He had been thinking about going, until he heard _ditch the cop_ , because that always means that Dream will either have to ditch him or they’ll ditch George themselves. With a gun. Probably. “He did everything but threaten my life. I’m not going.” 

“Listen,” Dream says tightly. “I told you to work with what he doesn’t know. J.G. isn’t going to say anything about you, I made sure of that, but now they’re going to try really, really hard to cover their asses about this fucking murder, so this is your chance to get suspects in for your art investigation.” He waits for George to say something, but he doesn’t. “I’m serious.” 

“You mean _you’re_ trying to cover your ass about this fucking murder,” George says.

“Fuck you,” Dream says. “I drove the car and I bought the cocaine because otherwise _he_ would’ve killed _me_ . I don’t _kill_ people. Not outright.” 

“You’re sick,” George says, but then Dream pushes his face closer and says, “You’re sick too. You’re fucking sick too. You’re just as much of a fucked-up, perverted, _depraved_ fucking junky as I am, but you get to hide it because you’ve got the badge and you’ve got the smile and you’ve got all of the people who believe you. I don’t believe you. And I’ve never fucking believed you—not for a second.” He narrows his eyes and wets his lips with his tongue like he’s ready to eat George alive. “You should thank me for that.”

“Why should I _thank_ you?” George spits.

“Because you get to do _this_ ,” Dream snarls back, and grabs him by the front of the shirt and slams his back into the dresser, where George can feel knobs digging into his hips. George grabs him around the throat right back, and then Dream is smiling at him, teeth digging into his lip, nails digging into George’s skin. “You get this. You get me.” 

“I should _thank_ you,” George says, pulling him closer by the neck, “Because I get to _have_ you?”

“A lot of people aren’t that fucking lucky,” Dream says, voice tight, heartbeat beating thickly against George’s fingers. “And trust me—” he wrangles himself out of George’s grip, “—once I figure out how to stay away from you, you’re never going to hear from me again.”

“Asshole,” George says, and pushes him square in the chest. Dream doesn’t look bothered.

“So when I ask for one thing, one _fucking_ thing, you stop being a little bitch and you actually listen to me for once,” Dream says. “Please just be there. It could help you too.” 

“It’s a fucking party, Dream,” George says. “It’s not the first or the last time he’s going to have one.”

“Please,” Dream says. “Please, George.” 

“Stop _begging_ ,” George says.

“Why?” Dream demands. “Scared you’ll listen?” George doesn’t say anything, after that. He feels like the answer is obvious. “ _Please_. You have to trust me.” 

“I can’t,” George says. “You know I can’t.”

“I know,” Dream says. “But I—I think it’s important, this time.”

George tries to work it out. So far, every time Dream has told him not to go somewhere, it’s been because he’s witnessed something that would incriminate him beyond belief—but then again, he hasn’t exactly used anything he knows against Dream at any point. Yet. He supposes there’s always that element of waiting. But even so, if Dream is actively _asking_ him to come somewhere, that must mean that there’s something that can help him, instead. Something that can clear his name. He looks at Dream again. 

“Why is it important?” He asks sharply.

“It just is,” Dream says, after a beat. “I don’t want to tell you when you can just come and find out yourself.”

“I can’t promise you anything,” George says, and Dream purses his lips and steps backwards, pushing a handful of hair away from his face. The air between them dulls to nothing like a power outage. 

“Fine,” he says. “Fucking fine. If you want to be difficult, you can sleep on the couch tonight and I’ll take your giant-ass bed to myself. Thanks.” He pauses, before he can turn back into George’s bedroom, and points a finger in his face. “And since you’re too proud to ask God, I’ll answer the question, since you’re thinking about it—people kill people because they have to.” 

“ _I_ don’t have to kill anyone,” George says, between gritted teeth. _What a fucked up way to think_ , he wants to tell Dream, but the more he thinks about it, the more it makes sense, with a dawning kind of horror. He’s definitely spending too much time with him. “He had a family. He had people who cared about him.”

Dream’s eyes flicker. “I know.”

“And you took him away from them,” George says. “Because you thought you _had_ to. You didn’t have to do _anything_ , Dream, don’t you get it? You’re saying you can do whatever you want, but—”

“You don’t get it,” Dream says. “You’ll never get it.”

“So I guess that meant you _wanted_ to kill him?” George challenges.

“ _Stop_ ,” Dream says frantically. “I didn’t want—you—you make this shit so fucking difficult for me, God, you—” And then he’s turning his back to George and slamming the door to the living room shut in his face, and George says, “Dream, come _on_ ,” but the door is already locked, and George says, “It’s my fucking _house_ ,” and Dream says, “Fuck off,” and the conversation is over. Like that. Like magic; like divine intervention. 

** 

George is pretty sure Dream is still in his house when he goes to work the next morning. He’s only fine with it because he won’t have to deal with him for the entire work day, because he’s too busy dealing with other things—like explaining away more information he’s learned under illegal means. In all honesty, he thinks he’s getting quite good at it.

“Seriously, if I’d found out in a way that was—less than ideal, I wouldn’t be telling all of you at all,” he tries to explain, against Darryl and Hank’s matching death glares and Alvarez’s annoyed, repeated looks in his direction. He tries to get her attention a few times—convince her to lend a helping hand for once—but she’s doing her best impression of being just as annoyed at him for going to Carter Page’s apartment unauthorized as Hank and Darryl are. “I was just at the apartment. Hank, you were there too. You can ask Proctor if you want—”

“Oh, I’ll be asking Proctor, all right,” Alvarez interrupts sharply, and George tries to keep himself from looking too relieved. “If he thinks he can send his detectives gallivanting around _our_ investigations—” 

“It wasn’t his detectives,” George says. Darryl and Hank don’t look too placated. He doesn’t know if he’s overreacting. “It was just me.”

“Still,” Alvarez says. “I’ll have a word with you later, Davidson. You can tag along with Hank and Darryl as they survey the updated Page crime scene first.” 

“We’re surveying the updated Page crime scene?” Hank asks.

“Yes,” Alvarez says curtly. “Go.”

They take a cop car from the garage entrance. Hank tries his hardest to maneuver his coffee cup into the cupholder which is stuffed with a handful of receipts. “Goddamn rookies,” he says under his breath, and George snorts from the shotgun seat as he watches him tamp down the receipts with his fist. “I swear, they treat these cars like they’re the fucking—shitty Ford Pintos they’ve got at home. Jesus Christ. Anyone else feeling bagels?” 

“Do we have time?” Darryl says. George clicks on his phone.

“It’s only ten,” he says. “Are we on a time limit?” 

“Nah,” Hank says, twisting his hand up to check his mirrors. “Alvarez is just sending us away so she can have that screaming sesh with Proctor, I bet.”

“I almost wish we’d stayed,” Darryl says. George can’t even muster up a fake laugh because of the impending shame in his stomach. “Still, though, Alyssa would have told us to come down if there was something that needed checking. But I guess it’s not a bad idea to keep ourselves updated.”

“I’m hearing no bagels,” Hank says.

“For the record, I’m voting bagels,” George says.

“You’re both bad people,” Darryl says distastefully. “God, George, I don’t know how it’s going to be around here when you leave.”

Hank makes a tiny sound of affirmation, but George can’t help but take his lighthearted tone of voice as something harsher—something that’s meant to dig a little deeper. “What do you mean?” 

“Just—I don’t know. I guess you’ve made things easier?” Darryl says. “For me, at least. Maybe it’s just people being on Baker about results for once, so he’s not too crazy about checking up on us, but—and I know that we’re not supposed to admit to it or anything—it’s nice, not having to explain everything you do.”

_Great_ , George thinks. _You ruined them_. “That wasn’t really the intended experience of my being here.” 

Hank snorts. The worst part is that they don’t even mean it with all of the negativity George hears. “I didn’t think it was,” he says. “Listen, man, it’s just, like—it’s gonna be weird, when you leave. If we’re lucky, Baker will remember everyone being on his ass and he’ll actually give us money to get shit done, but that’s the best case scenario. Normal case scenario is that we go back to business as usual, you know what I mean? We’re not really used to shit like this. So. You have to be patient with us.”

“I’m not really used to it either,” George says uncomfortably. “I didn’t mean to—I’m not like this all the time. I’m not a—a _steamroller_ or anything.”

“Never said you were, man,” Darryl says, and claps him on the shoulder from the backseat consolingly. “But still. You get shit done. That’s what we’re not used to.”

He really is a bad person. 

They get their bagels and then go to the crime scene, but before Hank can pull into the cop-car-infested parking lot of the apartment complex, George catches a flash of straw-yellow in his peripheral vision. “Wait,” he says, interrupting Darryl and Hank’s conversation abruptly. “What’s—is that J.G.?”

He’s wandering around the back entrance of the complex—where there’s less cops and more interested onlookers—wearing dark sunglasses and a backwards snapback. Clothing that’s conspicuous only in its attempt to be inconspicuous. George almost wants to slam his back into his seat from the sheer absurdity of the situation, but he’s distracted by Hank saying, “Shit. Yeah. It is.”

“What in the—” Darryl says, and swallows his mouthful of bagel so his voice isn’t muffled. “Pull over, what are you waiting for?”

“Shit, shit, shit,” Hank says, and pulls over the car—slowly. He rolls down his window and George pushes his head back and closes his eyes, palming his face with his hands. J.G. still hasn’t seen him yet—he could still back out of every promise he made with his blood-filled mouth and tell Hank everything he knows, but then again, George knows what he’d do about that, in a fucked up way. He’d probably tell Dream. “J.G.”

J.G. pulls his sunglasses down and steps closer to the sidewalk. George turns his head, and their eyes meet, and he watches the way J.G.’s mouth slackens, how his face bleeds into a white sheet. There’s a fine blue bruise on his cheek, and his lip is still busted from where Dream’s boot meshed it with his bottom layer of teeth. George can see the stitches.

_He’s not going to say anything_ , George thinks, and the guilty satisfaction rolls over him like a wave. 

“Detectives,” he manages, eyes never leaving George’s face. His eyelid twitches, inflamed with some kind of infection that hadn’t been there before. “What are you—”

“You on a walk?” Hank asks him, smoothly. George knows his voice is a front because he watches the way he clutches the wrapper of his bagel and runs his thumb across it obsessively. “Checking out the crime scene or what?” 

“I just—wanted to know what was going on,” J.G. says stiffly. “Full honesty. That’s all it is.” 

“Listen, we were just on our way out, actually,” Darryl pipes up, so easily George can’t help but send him a look through the rearview mirror. “Why don’t you hop in with us and we’ll give you a ride to wherever you’re headed? Maybe stop at the station for a sec first.”

“I can walk back,” J.G. says. “Thank—thank you, detectives, but I’ll manage.”

“Wasn’t an offer,” Hank says. “This is good for you, J.G. Don’t make things too difficult for us and let us ask you some questions.”

He looks at George again, and—with a newfound type of confidence—George looks back at him. J.G.’s proverbial ears flatten against his head, and the red flush in his face pales again like a thermal blanket, and he nods, quickly, like his head will fall off if he nods for longer. 

“Just a few questions?” He asks again, shakily.

“Just a few questions,” Hank confirms. J.G. doesn’t ask many other questions after that.

It isn’t a few questions. They get him in arraignment court the same day they lock him as a suspect, because Judge Spirov makes some special exception that has to do with media interest—something George is too distracted to understand. 

Power isn’t meant to drip from fingers as rawly as he’d felt it in the car. And it hadn’t been because _he’d_ done something to warrant J.G. being afraid of him—he’d just been associated with someone. With Dream. _Caught together, hanged together_. Something he can’t avoid, because Dream is stuck against him, dyed onto him, carved into him with a fine blade. He may as well start readying the fucking noose.

Proctor and Baker are talking about something at the head of the meeting table. George is watching Nick the intern make a paper crane out of a gum wrapper. “The court case itself may be scheduled for a few months in, but there’s nothing stopping Spirov from bumping it closer to a few weeks,” Baker is saying. “This has been at the forefront of Floridian news for God knows how long. Since the Backus went missing.”

“Plus, which one do people care about more?” Alyssa adds, neatly ignoring all of the annoyed glances the Art unit sends in her direction. “Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the work you do, Agent Proctor, but there’s only so much value we can place on a picture of a field.”

“I beg your pardon?” One of Proctor’s detectives says acidly. Proctor has to put a hand out to calm her, which is kind of creepy, in a cult-leader kind of way. Nick must notice, too, because his eyes dart up and he and George share an exhausted smile. 

“I understand where you’re coming from, Detective, but if this department continues trying to tamp down an _international case_ in favor of a local investigation, I may have to get the Commissioner involved,” Proctor says, still staring bullets into Alyssa’s eyes—and everyone hears what he says. _I’ll have your job. I’ll have all of your jobs_. George looks around for Alvarez, and he watches Baker do so, too, but she isn’t here. They realize at the same time that this is something Baker will have to do on his own.

“There’s no need to rush to—such measures, Agent,” he says desperately, physically stepping into the gap between Proctor and the table. “I’m sure my Detective didn’t mean to undermine your investigation. Please, don’t misunderstand our worry as a reason to tamp down the Page case. We simply care about bringing a murderer to justice.”

Proctor relaxes like a calmed wild cat. “I didn’t mean to imply that I don’t,” he mumbles. “But you have to understand. A murder charge is a permanent stain on a man, but he’d prefer it over the international havoc that the art charge would create. You need to let us have this first.” 

“Plus, he admitted that the murder was a cover-up for the art theft,” one of the other federal agents pipes up. “No matter if the murder was manufactured as a cover-up or if the thieves used it as an opportunity to strike, that’s a concrete admittance of his involvement in the theft. He literally said, _they can’t figure anything out about the art while they’re investigating the murder._ This is huge.”

“Why can’t we nail him on both the art theft and the murder?” Darryl asks, frustrated. Proctor sends him a look like he’s being moronic, but it doesn’t seem to faze him. “We don’t know what he’ll admit to yet. He could admit to both.”

“He’s not going to admit to both,” George tells him hollowly, because he knows it and they all know it. Saint Don will force him to admit to the murder to cover up the art theft, because he doesn’t want anymore federal attention. They can get him on both, but one of them has to go first—and George can’t let the murder investigation go first. He just can’t. “Proctor is right. You’ll always have him on the murder, but… our investigation isn’t going to get this chance again.”

“George,” Hank says thinly, readying himself to convince him to change his mind, but George just looks away. 

“I’m sorry, but this isn’t fucking fair,” Alyssa says, standing up and punching her fists again the table. “Our investigation into Saint Don has been ongoing for _years_ , cold or not. Longer than _your_ fucking case, I’m sorry to say it, George, but—you don’t even know if he did it, for God’s sake!” 

“Saint Don might find a way to pin it on someone else if we don’t convict J.G. first,” Proctor says. “You don’t know how fast we have to act, Detective.” 

“Things are different for federal organizations,” one of Proctor’s detectives says, and George watches Hank and Alyssa ready themselves to scream at him, but Baker just hisses air through his teeth and says, “We understand that, Agent Harwood, but there has to be a middleground,” and Proctor says, “I’m afraid there isn’t, Baker,” and Darryl says, “Oh, come on,” and Baker says, “Quiet, Detective—Agent Proctor, I—” and then the voices devolve into finely-tuned, official-sounding rounds of screaming that George has to sit between and watch, knowing he contributed to it.

It’s not like he could’ve done anything else. It’s not like he could’ve walked away and left the murder investigation to the Orlando team, but—his stomach gnaws at him obsessively, telling him that he should’ve, telling him to make something up, prove some kind of point about J.G. being innocent in the art theft. 

This is what he wanted. This is, by definition, the lead they’ve been waiting for for months. But it doesn’t feel right. It feels like teeth in his mouth that don’t belong to him. 

_Here’s a fucking question for you, God,_ he thinks bitterly and stands up from the table, feet tracing the steps to the garage entrance easy as breathing. He tells himself he’ll go out for a breath and a cigarette but that’s not what he’s going to do. He’s going to do something stupid like snort a handful of pills in plain view of police officers. 

Something stops him before he can lose himself in the blinding-white hallways. “Yo, hold on,” he hears behind him, and Nick the intern jogs up to him with a smile, completely unaffected by the happenings of the hellish room behind them. George looks around them as if he’s referring to someone else, but it’s obvious he’s the only person in the hallway. He stops walking.

“Um, hi,” he says. “I was just—gonna have a smoke. So.”

“Oh, that’s cool,” Nick says. He scratches at the back of his head with a free hand. “I don’t smoke, but I’ll join you anyway.” 

“Okay,” George says, after a beat, and then they walk side-to-side down the hallway. It’s not bad. It’s kind of nice—calming, when compared to the alternative, which would be staying in the conference room. “Um, can I help you?” 

“Nah, I just—kind of wanted to get away from all of that, I guess,” Nick says. “I don’t know if you knew, but—Proctor was meant to start training me as a Detective before this entire Backus theft explosion. So I’ve kind of been his assistant for a really long time.” 

“Oh, shit,” George says, and gives him a once-over. He can’t be older than twenty, but that’s not much of a reason to not believe him. He was getting trained at twenty, too. “Sorry about that, I guess.”

“Nah, it’s all good,” Nick says, with a look on his face that makes it seem like it really _is_ all good. “More hands-on experience, right? Point is, though, I’ve seen Proctor at his worst and at his best, and as much as I don’t like him at either, I know when he’s dead set on something. We’re going to get J.G. on the Backus theft.”

“I know,” George says, but hearing Nick say it does solidify his worries, in a cruel way. “Thank fuck. I might be able to get back home for a little bit if we solve this case. Or at least I’ll get moved away from Orlando to follow a different murder.” Only when he says it does the reality of his words set in. Moved away from Orlando—moved away from the Orlando Police Department with its shitty coffee but really good bagels, from Miami nightlife and his Brady Bunch Airbnb and Alyssa and Darryl and Hank and Dream. 

Moved away from Dream.

“Not that we can be sure he did it,” George adds, and feels filthy to the bone. 

Some kind of relief melts into Nick’s face. “That’s what I wanted to tell you, actually,” he says. “I don’t know, it just—all we know is that Saint Don and his boys _helped_ steal the painting, right? We can’t be sure of their connection to the international case. Who hired them or whatever. I know I’m just a lowly intern, but—”

“No, I know what you mean,” George says uneasily. “It’s—I don’t know. I really don’t know. It’s something I’d have to discuss with Wallace.”

“I wouldn’t take it _that_ far,” Nick says. “It’s just messing with me, I guess. I don’t want to grasp at straws here, you know? If we just hold on a little longer, I bet there’s evidence that’s— _so_ much bigger, out there. But nobody’s going to fucking believe me if I say that, so.”

George snorts out a laugh, rocking on the heels of his feet. They haven’t been walking towards his smoke spot for a long time, but maybe that’s a good thing. For him, at least. “I know what you mean.”

“Okay,” Nick says, shoulders relaxing. “Okay, good. I just wanted to feel like I wasn’t crazy, I guess. I’d talk to Proctor, but you saw how he was in there.”

“I’ll help you,” George says. “If you want.”

“What?” Nick says. “For real? I wouldn’t want to—”

“No, I think it could help, if we brought it up,” George says. The possibilities already flash in front of him—if they don’t progress the art investigation, they might be able to get undercovers in to find out more about the theft straight from the source, and then they might be able to trace the painting itself. It means he’ll stay in Orlando for longer, but—maybe he needs to stay in Orlando for longer.

_You_ want _to_ , George’s brain tells him. _Important distinction_.

“I think so too,” Nick says. “But—not right now, obviously. And we probably shouldn’t admit we talked about it at all. Or, like—I should probably just stay completely silent the entire time is what I’m saying.”

“If only I could stay completely silent,” George says sorrowfully. “Yeah, I—I think it’s important to talk to Proctor about it. And I’m not his agent. He’ll have to listen to what I say if I get Wallace involved.”

“I hope he does,” Nick says. “I really fucking hope he does.”

** 

The Conrad Lennox case closes the next night like a thumped Bible. He was a security guard murdered by a vengeful drug peddler who didn’t want competition towards his casinos, so he used him as an example—something Alyssa calls _a_ _capitalistic hamartia_ and something George calls _a bullshit excuse_. Carter Page was thought to be the killer, but he was not. 

“If we can finally find Carter Page, it’ll be a day to fucking rejoice, I swear,” Hank says, as they lead each other through the exit towards his car. George is still following them because it’s not like he can hang out with Proctor and Nick and Baker, but it’s not like he’d been invited to wherever they’re heading to. He just _figured_ he’d been invited, because he’s a selfish fucking idiot. They don’t say it, but he knows they think it. 

He still really hopes they don’t say it. 

“We’ll find him,” Darryl says easily, and they stop at Hank’s car, and George turns around to head back to the entrance of the station because he doesn’t really know where else to go and he’s home alone tonight, so he wants to get home quickly and fall asleep before Dream stumbles back home on an eight-ball and a bottle of Jack Daniels, but then he hears Darryl say, “Hey, where are you going?”

George turns around. They all watch him in quiet fascination. He juts a thumb back towards the station. “I was just kind of, um, thinking I’d head back,” he says awkwardly, not mentioning that he’d thought about asking Nick for a ride home so he wouldn’t bother Hank, but Darryl just furrows his eyebrows.

“What are you talking about?” He says. “I know our departments have their—differences, but that’s work, man. You’re still our friend.” George doesn’t say anything. “Come on—we haven’t gotten to celebrate a case in a long time, and no matter what happens, you’re gonna close up yours soon, too. Come out with us.”

He looks at Alyssa.

“Yes, I want you to come, idiot,” she says, with what George thinks is fondness. “I won’t yell at you. Promise.” 

“Me neither,” Hank says.

“You couldn’t yell at me if you tried,” George says, forcing himself to loosen up. Hank’s face splits into a smile.

“I could and I totally would,” he complains loudly, and they erupt into a comfortably domestic conversation as they pile into Hank’s car and start for somewhere George doesn’t recognize. He’s been out a few times with Hank and Darryl, but downtown Orlando is nothing like Miami. He knows this even when they pile out into a bar that Darryl tells him is _actually pretty chill_.

It is pretty chill, if he’s a person who’s allowed to decide that type of thing. It’s nestled somewhere in the stomach of downtown Orlando, the exact location Hank had warned him to never go clubbing in, but that apparently hasn’t stopped them as a group yet.

It’s late enough to be cozily packed, slow bodies writhing against purple barstools and seductive lighting. The ceilings are low and the floors are graffitied over in colorful lettering, and George can feel sweat sticking his clothes to his body immediately, the smooth temptation of the club worming somewhere inside him. It’s too dark to know what he’s doing but it’s too tepid to do anything but sit in a booth, so they sit in a booth.

“You could still get a Coke or something,” Alyssa suggests, as they watch George pick at his bowl of peanuts in something they must mistake as misery. 

“Nah, don’t worry,” George says. “It’s not something I miss. Me and my peanuts are fine.”

“I know it’s not polite to say it out loud, but—I really do admire that you don’t do that sort of thing,” Hank says, eyes watching George’s reaction carefully. “It’s a lot of self-control, so. Props to you.”

That almost makes George laugh again. “Thanks, man,” he says, because he can’t say, _I have things I like more than drinking and if I drink while doing those things I’ll die_. “It’s a health thing, kind of. Not really a good idea for me to drink.” 

“Amen,” Darryl says, and lifts up his beer. “To never dragging around Hank’s drunk and decaying body around again.”

“I’m insulted,” Hank says, but clinks their glasses together anyway. “Do you think Baker updated Alvarez on what progress we made today?”

“Ah ah ah, no talking about work,” Darryl says, but nobody listens to him. 

“God, I hope so,” Alyssa says. “I really want to know what she thinks about the whole thing. If she’d been here today, I know she would’ve—” but she doesn’t get to finish because Darryl clamps a hand over her mouth and shushes her. 

“I _said_ , no talking about work!” He says loudly, making Alyssa _hymph_ and drown her sorrows into her cocktail. A moment of silence passes until he can’t hold it in any longer. “God, I do really wonder where she was today, though. I swear she hasn’t taken a sick day the entire time I’ve been with this department.”

“Yeah, it’s weird,” George says, but he doesn’t say why—the reason being because the last time he spoke to Alvarez one-on-one she’d been convincing him to break the law and he doesn’t know if they have that same reason for finding her absence so strange. Especially knowing she’s been sneaking around under Baker’s nose just as much as he has. He doesn’t want their questioning to turn into genuine worry, so he changes pace. “What I also find weird is that Hank hasn’t called his girlfriend since he left her in Miami.”

“Hank has a girlfriend in _Miami_?” Alyssa says, voice filled with glee, and they’re chided over for a good hour or so. It’s easy enough to see how steadily the bar fills in the timeframe, until a group of barhoppers is practically crowded into their booth and George is picking at his peanut shells. 

“Is it always this full?” He yells at Hank, who just shakes his head in bewilderment.

“Nope,” he says. “I think tonight is weirdly packed. Look at the entrance—a shitton of people are out, for some reason.”

George cranes his neck to find the hole-in-the-wall door of the bar, which is perpetually held open by a bored-looking attendant as people pour inside. “That is a bit odd,” he murmurs, leaning back into his booth to continue peeling at a peanut shell. “Is it a holiday or something?”

“If a Saint Don party is a holiday,” Darryl says. “It’s kind of an open secret that when he decides Orlando’s in need of a party, he throws a party.”

“Makes sense, for it to be Don,” Alyssa sighs. “I wanted to tell myself it was some Wall Street Plaza celebration, but—you’re right.” She swings back a gulp of her drink and grimaces at the flavor. “It’s weird he’s being so open about it. Usually he doesn’t want cop attention at those parties.”

George frowns, a feeling inching its way into his gut like water torture to the scalp. “He _doesn’t_ want cop attention?”

“I mean, usually, no,” Alyssa says. “I only found out what he had planned tonight ‘cause I overheard some witnesses talking about it at Page’s apartment.” 

“I heard about it, too,” Hank says, but doesn’t note who told him so George won’t make fun of him about Vica for another half-hour. “Obviously he’s not keeping it quiet.”

“Obviously,” George echoes, looking down at the table. “That’s…” 

“Don’t say it,” Darryl says. “No work talk.” George sends him a look. “ _However_ . My cop radar _is_ kind of going off.”

“God, I didn’t want to say it out loud, but I was thinking about it, too,” Hank says, voice spilling out like he’d been holding it in. “It’s messing with me. I don’t know if you guys remember, but before he worked out that deal with the Baker, he was really, really fucking good at weeding out undercovers. Like, really good.”

George twitches uncomfortably in his seat. He doesn’t like what that means, because if Hank knows, that means Dream knows, too. That means he wanted George there for a reason.

_He wouldn’t do that to me_ , George thinks, but he doesn’t know, because he doesn’t know _what_ Dream would do. He doesn’t know him. It hurts to hammer in, but he doesn’t know him. Rather—he _shouldn’t_ know him. 

“I don’t know about his cronies, but he’s always been weirdly good at recognizing people as cops,” Hank continues. “But the only way he’d be able to do that would be if he was in the same location as them, which isn’t always possible with his clubs and shit, so—he had a lot of parties. Do you remember?”

“I wasn’t here, but I heard about it,” Alyssa says, as Darryl chews on his lip next to her. “God, don’t tell me we have to go check that shit out. I’m officially declaring myself off-duty. I cannot deal with this right now.”

“We don’t have to go anywhere,” Hank says coaxingly. “But won’t it bother you if we don’t figure out why he’s—”

“It will not bother me,” Alyssa says dutifully, “Because he knows us and he knows it’ll bother us and I’m not giving him the satisfaction of being right.”

“I guess you’re right,” Hank says, seemingly dropping the topic. “Some people definitely need that satisfaction of being right, though.” 

“Yeah,” Darryl says. And then: “Wait.”

“Wait,” George says. 

“No,” Alyssa says, after a painful halt. “She wouldn’t.”

“It sounds like her, though,” George says. “ _The satisfaction of being right_. Tell me that doesn’t sound like her.”

Alyssa holds his glance.

“I’ll call her,” she says.

**

Alvarez doesn’t answer. Not on the first ring and not on the sixth call. 

It cuts their festivities short, to say the least, because it turns into George racking his messages for the address Dream has definitely implanted into his phone at some point—he finds it easily, left in his Notes app from where he must have passed out while they watched Kitchen Nightmares sometimes this week, because that’s something they fucking do now. He tacks his phone up to use as a GPS while Darryl continues the rapid-fire calls to Alvarez’s cell.

“Straight to voicemail,” he says, fingers of his free hand so tight on the grab handle on the ceiling of the car they go white. “I bet it’s dead. Should I call Baker?”

“ _No_!” Alyssa says, at the same time that Hank goes, “Jesus fuck, no! Let’s just—we’re going to have to go inside, but they’ll definitely recognize me and Darryl. We’ve been doing fucking interrogations for the past week.”

“I could go in,” Alyssa suggests. Hank hisses air between his teeth from the driver’s seat as they catch sight of the winding road of cars pulling up to Don’s luxurious driveway. His mansion isn’t fenced in, surprisingly, and the front lawn opens up to something comparable to a sideshow attraction—artificial palm trees open up like praying palms against the sky, and lights scatter the seafoam walls of the modern-light mansion. “I’ve been overseeing the crime scenes for a while. I’ve barely even met any of your suspects.”

“That sounds good,” Hank says distractedly, eyes darting over to George in the rearview mirror. “If you’re down to go in, George, it’d probably be better to have two people inside looking for Alvarez. They definitely won’t know who you are.”

“Yeah,” George says. “Definitely.” 

He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t know what he could say. He resorts to combing back his hair and pulling off his zip-up hoodie and rolling up his sleeves. He looks through the window: grand balconies hover precariously over the hordes of partygoers, so different from the old-money guests George had seen at the Baker mansion that it almost scares him. 

“We don’t have wires, so just—Alyssa can call Darryl, and you can call me,” Hank says quickly, working them into machines at the front exit of the Baker mansion. “We’ll be able to hear everything you’re doing.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s fine,” George says. He and Alyssa have about twenty seconds to jump out and into the party before the person behind them starts honking, but George still doesn’t feel ready. He feels like an idiot for not taking anything, but he jumps out anyway. 

It’s kind of a beautiful way for everything to end: it’ll blow up in his face like the fireworks Saint Don’s gaggle of Playboy Bunnies are letting off in the backyard. “Let me hold onto your arm,” Alyssa tells him, and George says, “What?” And Alyssa says, “Don’t fucking ask questions. Let’s just—get inside, and we’ll split up onto the floors. Meet at the pool that’s off-grounds in half an hour. Okay?”

“Okay,” George says. 

Getting inside is the easy part. 

George knows, in the logical part of his mind, that Baker’s parties are for networking. They’re for finger-foods and whispers between politicians and art nouveau and Baroque women. There are no Baroque women at Saint Don’s mansion: there are strippers and models and prostitutes and angels, blonde angels and brunette angels with pale skin and dark skin and tiny smiles and long legs, all wearing artificial halos and artificial wings tacked onto their backs. It’s so phony it’s almost endearing and it’s so suffocating it’s almost enough to make George sick.

He knows Dream is here.

It’s not a Miami club, either, and now that George has seen the place, he doesn’t think he can imagine Dream anywhere else. He sees people lick ecstasy out of each other’s mouths and he sees men push girls against pool tables and he watches spilled blood go ignored and moaning mouths go obeyed. Pure Wildean hedonism. 

They do whatever they want. Of course Dream would like it here; of course he’d want to show George what it’s like. He doesn’t know if he’s being naive, convincing himself that that’s the real reason, because the alternative is so eerie, so shrouded, that it’d be easier to accept anything else. Fucking _anything_ else.

The panic sets in. He’s been peeking his head inside the numerous grand bedrooms, and even though he hasn’t seen a dangerously familiar face at any point yet, he also hasn’t found Alvarez. He looks out the window at the pool—it’s lit up by the fireworks going off in the sky and covered by people, so it must not be the one Alyssa was referring to. 

He desperately wants to know what Alvarez is looking for, here—if she’s looking for anything—but he doesn’t want to ask her, when he finds her. _If_ he finds her. He hopes, selfishly, that she’ll tell him on her own volition. 

George rattles at the door handle of one of the unexplored bedrooms, finding it suspiciously unlocked. When he sees it’s empty, he readies himself to turn back and keep searching, but a gleam of blue light flashes against the stained glass of the sliding door against the balcony. Someone giggles; shushes another person. The voices are distinctly female. He clicks the door shut behind him. 

“What are you doing?” Hank asks from the other side of the phone.

“I’ll call you back,” George says, and hangs up. 

He steps forward, willing himself to move closer, but Alvarez does it for him. “Hello?” He hears her call, and she walks off the balcony and back into the bedroom, voice catching on her breath when she sees him. Arla walks behind her. 

They both look different. Alvarez’s hair is down, protruding over her back in a sea of black ink; she’s wearing flashy jewelry and a tight dress and bright, smeared lipstick, lipstick that draws attention to her mouth like a beacon. “ _George_?” 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” He asks, and watches Arla’s fingers inch themselves over her shoulder to hold her closer. Alvarez goes so easily George thinks she’s on something, for a moment, but her eyes are sober and alert. “No way. No fucking—”

“Don’t say anything,” Alvarez pleads, and her iron resolve isn’t even crumbling in front of George; it isn’t there to begin with. She’s someone different. “Please, George, I’ll explain everything, just please don’t—”

“You’ll _explain everything_?” He asks. “There’s shit to explain here? Do you even—what the fuck is going on here?”

“Don’t talk to her like that,” Arla says, and then George says, “I’m sorry, who the fuck are you to her again?” And Arla says, “Her girlfriend, actually,” and George says, “No the fuck you are _not_ ,” and Arla says, “I’m pretty sure I am, and you shouldn’t be saying anything because you and my ex-boyfriend have been running fucking circles around each other for the past two months,” and Alvarez says, “Can both of you just—shut the fuck up for one fucking second and let me talk? Jesus Christ. Just—give me a second, okay, babe? Let me talk to him.” 

“Okay,” George says, cutting off his own argument abruptly. He’s so angry he feels like directing it all onto Arla. He’s so angry it feels like he’s looking at himself, and he may as well be—he may as well fucking be. “If you want to talk to me, Alvarez, you can talk to me.” 

She takes a deep breath. “She _is_ my girlfriend,” she says, and watches the way George rises to the surface before continuing. “But she’s not—let me explain, okay, George? I know you think she’s this evil person, and I know I should think that too, but—that’s not what happened, okay? Things don’t go to plan. You know things don’t go to plan.” 

“Don’t tell me what I know,” George says between gritted teeth, just to watch her wilt.

“You have to understand,” Alvarez says, “She hasn’t done anything wrong. And when I say that, I’m speaking as your Sargeant, not as her girlfriend. She’s a _witness_ , George. In _your_ investigation, for God’s sake, not even mine.” 

“Did you send in the tip?” George demands. 

“What tip?” Arla asks, but George doesn’t pay her any attention. 

“No,” Alvarez says. “That wasn’t me.” 

“But you’ve done other things,” George says. Arla making it out of overnight holding suddenly makes sense. “To help her.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Alvarez says, even though it matters. Even though George can’t stop thinking about how neatly everything lines up now that he knows she’s hooking up with Dream’s ex-girlfriend. Not even _hooking up with_ —dating. She’s fucking _dating_ her. Not as casual as a hookup but not as serious as a marriage; the perfect in-between for eventually stomping her under her heel. “I’ve never interfered in her investigation, _ever_ , and she’s never tried to extort me for anything. I promise you.”

“You’re lying,” George says, and Arla must be sick of it, because she says, “Aren’t _you_ , Detective Davidson?” 

“Stop,” Alvarez tells her quietly, and she listens. She turns back to George. “We talked about this, George. We both have our methods for keeping an ear to the ground.” She squeezes Arla’s hand. “Mine just ended up a little more complicated than expected.”

George’s mouth tastes bitter. “You weren’t answering your phone,” he tells her. “We’ve been trying to reach you all night. Me, Darryl, Hank, Alyssa—she and I are here to look for you, even though we shouldn’t be. Even though _we_ were somehow warned that Don uses these parties to weed out undercovers, but your _girlfriend_ somehow forgot to mention that you probably shouldn’t be here as a fucking cop.”

“She’s not here as a cop,” Arla bites back. “She’s here as my plus-one. You’re seriously implying I’d let Don put a bullet in her skull?”

“That’s what he does to us?” George asks.

“You wanna fucking find out?” Arla says, but Alvarez just says, “Shit, George, I’m so sorry—my phone’s dead. I’ll—I’ll call them right now. You said Alyssa’s here?”

George manages to tear his eyes away from Arla’s face. “Yeah, looking for you,” he says forcefully. He doesn’t know why he’s so disappointed, when he’s pretty sure he’s done worse things than her. It feels selfish to use her as his gauge for the morality of his actions, but at this point, maybe he should fucking admit he’s a selfish person. “I’m supposed to meet her out back, if we find you. You need to leave.”

“Okay,” Alvarez says, quietly. “Okay. Yeah. We really should go anyway.”

“Don’t just fucking listen to him, Mira,” Arla tells her, but Alvarez shakes her head.

“They’re not safe, if they’re in here,” she says, “And they’re not going to leave if I don’t leave. It’s okay. We can just go back to my place, if you want to come with me.”

“Of course I want to come with you,” Arla says. “Fine. Jesus. And _you_ , Detective—I expect you’re going to stay quiet, if you don’t want the entire world finding out the shit you’ve been getting at behind closed doors.”

“Trust me, I’ll be quiet,” George says, but doesn’t look at her. He looks at Alvarez. “Really. I mean it.” 

“Thank you,” she tells him.

“This conversation isn’t over,” he calls behind her, as she and Arla leave the room and leave him feeling like a disappointed father. Like he’s ,at any point, the mature person in this equation—but at least he’s not selfish enough to act upon his desires. 

He calls Hank again. He’ll let Arla create her own cover story; he doesn’t think he can make anything up that would make sense when his heart is already beating out of his mouth. 

“Hey,” Hank says. “Everything good?”

George clicks off the speaker and brings the phone to his ear, opening the balcony again and walking out. The air streaks over his skin in its sudden humidity, and he looks down at the pool. There’s an overflowing fountain at the center topped by a statue of a cherub, and pink dots of people dot the water like cocktail umbrellas. 

“Everything’s fine,” he finds himself saying. “I found Alvarez—she’s on her way back home, I told her to call you. I need to tell Alyssa, but—”

“Oh, holy shit, thank God,” Hank says, and George hears Darryl say something near him. “Okay, cool. We parked kind of—off-grounds, but if you move through the pool Alyssa saw earlier you’ll see where we are.”

“I’m on my way,” George says, and hangs up. He knows he’s selfish because he gives himself a moment to think. He clutches his phone to his chest and watches the people in the pool invent a new type of gluttony. He knows they’re not hungry, but they keep eating like they’re starving. 

He goes downstairs, after that, and thinks about finding Dream, but the fucked up part is that he knows Dream will find his way back to him anyway. He’ll need somewhere to crash tonight, and George will need someone to look at. 

George has to walk through an archway topped by two honest-to-God marble angels to get to the pool, which is definitely more tacky than it is impressive. A gaggling group of people jump into the pool in their swim trunks, splattering waiters carrying serving trays. Some of them head towards a closed clearing between the shrubbery, so George follows.

He doesn’t know how Saint Don seeds out his undercovers, but following the twitchy people who trail after waiters must be as good of a way as ever. Some of the servers go off into employee entrances, but George’s attention is quickly drawn to the artificial palm leaves closing off a glowing square of white he has to strain his eyes to see. 

He walks closer, splitting through the palm trees and letting the shrubbery cut at his ankles. The first thing that hits him is that it’s completely secluded: it must be Saint Don’s private pool, because there’s only one person inside it. The second thing is that it’s not white; it’s turquoise, brighter than the contrived dark blue of the rest of the pools. It's always easier to see the blues, and through the colors blurring George's vision, Dream goes off like a flashing neon light.

He doesn’t give himself time to see who’s around, because the pool is secluded enough to make him seem completely alone. Completely alone with fucking _Dream_ , who’s humming to himself and bobbing in the water in what looks like the same suit he’d worn to Baker’s party.

George walks closer, shoes clicking against the tiles. The purpling night dyes the floor under his feet pink, and when he looks around the colors darken the edge of his vision, the greys of the palm trees and the deep purples of their shadows—and the eternal, completely perpetual teal light of the pool. When Dream sees him, his smile goes so big George almost doesn’t recognize him.

“ _George_ !” He says joyously, and swims closer to the edge, pulling himself up so that his elbows rest against the edge of the pool. Dream peeks up at him, eyes reflecting every color, colors George doesn’t recognize. He’s completely drenched, so George slips his phone and wallet out of his pocket and kicks them to the side before Dream does something stupid like touch him. And then he touches him. “You came. Holy shit. You _came_.”

“I didn’t come for you,” George says, and tries to kick his foot out from where Dream grabs at his ankles. The wetness that seeps into the leg of his pants is only somewhat refreshing. “I had to—Alvarez was here, okay?”

“I know,” Dream says.

“Is that why you wanted me to come here?” George snaps at him—if his irritation at Arla had been repressed, the way he talks to Dream must be borderline despicable. “Because you knew Saint Don keeps an eye out for cops? Is that why you were so obsessed with making me come?”

“What?” Dream says, blinking chlorine out of his eyes. His nails digging crescents against George’s exposed calf. “That’s— _no_. I told you to come here so you could get your friend out. Alvarez.”

“ _What_?” George says. “How did you know she’d be here?” 

“Arla,” Dream says. “They’re—”

“Yeah,” George says. “I know. But—”

“I’ve done shit for Saint Don,” Dream says, “But honeytraps are—I don’t do honeytraps. And this shit—” he unattaches his hand from George’s leg and drifts back for a second, spreading his arms out as he treads water, “—Is the fucking Alfafa honey of Saint Don parties. I mean, seriously. He has _Playboy Bunnies_ here.”

“I saw,” George says. It’s good Dream tells him the party’s a honeytrap, because he definitely would’ve realized that too late; especially considering that this is his ideal honeytrap. Dream, alone, looking up at him with the pink of his mouth on full display, so pink it makes a perfect heart from where George looks down at him. “Are you?”

“Am I what?” Dream asks.

“Trapping me,” George says, like Dream will give him an honest answer. Dream must know it’s a ridiculous question, too, even though he looks like he’s already chugged a bottle of his liquor of choice, because he swims closer and pushes himself up at George again.

“Always,” he says. “And one day I’ll have you right where I want you and you’ll never be able to leave.”

“That’s what you want?” George says. Dream tilts his head like he’s thinking about it. His hair is streaked back from the chlorine.

“No,” he decides, finally. “I don’t want you at all.” 

“You—” George says, but his voice turns into a shriek because Dream gives a sudden yank at his leg, and he goes tumbling into the pool, face-planting directly onto water that feels like shards of glass. He watches Dream swim at him under the surface, laughs turning to bubbles under the water as he rises back to the surface, coughing incoherently.

“ _Dream what the fuck_ —” he starts, but then Dream giggles and places a finger against his lips, says, “Shhh, you don’t want us to get caught, do you?” And George says, “Are you—not— _meant_ to be here?” And Dream says, “That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Isn’t it so fucking nice?”

“Isn’t _what_ nice?” George gasps. He’s in his dress shirt and slacks, so the water weighs down on him, and that’s not even mentioning the way he’s still struggling for air from being _flung_ into a _pool_. 

“When shit doesn’t matter,” Dream says, smile still big. His face is pale like the white marble cherubs, and the turquoise water draws faint blue lines under his eyes. “ _This_ is what it was like for those people God killed, George. _This_ is what it was like. _This_ is why he hated them so much.”

“Maybe he fucking should’ve,” George bites back. “Maybe it—fuck—maybe this isn’t— _good_ for us, Dream, God. This isn’t good for you.”

“I know,” Dream says. “It’s so bad for me. That’s why I do it in small doses.”

“What?” George says. “What do you mean?”

Dream just shakes his head. “There’s so much I want to tell you,” he says, and his feet kick George’s under the water, his voice echoing against the secluded tiles. “Is that fucked? That there’s so much I want to talk to you about?”

“So fucked,” George says. _Get out of the pool_. “Me too.”

“You too?” Dream asks. His breath tastes like whiskey. 

“Me too,” George says. “I do want to talk to you about things. I think—I think you’re smart. And I think you could—help me, with some things, but we could never—you know this could never—be anything. Right?”

“What?” Dream asks, and has the nerve to look confused. “Why not?” 

“Are you serious?” George says. “You can’t be serious.”

“Why can’t I be serious?” Dream says.

“You killed someone,” George says.

“No,” Dream says, and catches the way George’s eyes flick over his face. “I mean—it’s—I told you that I want to tell you things, but I can’t. This is one of those things I can’t tell you.”

“What?” George says. “You—Dream, did you help with the Lennox hit or not?”

“Hmm,” Dream says, and doesn’t answer. He swims towards the wall of the pool, and George follows, finally getting the chance to catch his breath when Dream just watches him pant against the railing he grips. 

“You can’t just not answer,” George says desperately, clinging to the railing of the pool. “I have—this— _image_ of you, you know, you can’t just—you don’t get to fuck with the way people think about you, Dream. I think about you in one way. Can we keep it to one way? One fucking way?”

Dream just shakes his head. “I don’t have to answer because you’re going to find out what I mean at some point,” He says. “I promise, okay? You’re going to know everything that’s going on and maybe—maybe then you’ll realize that—there’s still a chance.”

“There’s zero fucking chance, Dream,” George says, but he has no energy to put force into his voice. 

“You want me,” Dream breathes. “So badly it hurts. Tell me I’m wrong.”

A beat passes; the air leaves George’s mouth like he has to slice it to bloody shards with his teeth. He watches their breaths mingle into pink fog in front of his eyes, thinks, _his blood must taste like mine, too_ , says, “Not in the way you think.”

“What way am I thinking?” Dream says.

“In the dangerous way,” George says. “I don’t want you in the dangerous way. I just want you in the stupid way. It’s not dangerous yet.”

“Yet?” Dream asks hopefully.

“Don’t you understand?” George says, voice breaking. “I’m not going to kiss you, I’m not going to fuck you, I’m never—you really don’t fucking get it? Nothing. Can _ever_ happen.” 

“Things happen whether you want them to or not,” Dream says. “Something’s fucking happening to you and you’re ignoring it.”

George squeezes his eyes shut. He’s cold and wet and he knows, without kissing him, that Dream tastes like blood and chlorine. “You don’t know anything.”

“I wish it was different,” Dream says, instead. “I wouldn’t have done the things I did if I got to have you in the end.”

“What _things_ did you do?” George asks him, but Dream just breathes out, ducks his head against George’s glance. 

“Stupid things,” he says. “You’d be mad, if I told you.”

“I wouldn’t be mad,” George says, and he’s so close to knowing he can taste it, feel it, because maybe, foolishly, Dream will tell him. “I promise I wouldn’t be mad.”

“Okay,” Dream says. “Okay. Listen to me.”

“What?” George says, moving closer, and Dream moves a hand to his cheek, wet thumb brushing against his face, and he drops his voice and says, “I’ve hid you long enough. They’re going to come ask me if I’ve seen you, and I’m going to say no, but only if you fucking book it to your car. Okay?”

“What?” George asks.

“Okay?” Dream repeats, with fervor, and George says, “Okay,” and scrambles out of the pool from the edge, sopping wet clothes dripping water into his eyes and into his mouth and against his phone and his wallet, and before he cuts through the clearing he turns around and watches Dream kick off into the pool and float on his back, look up at the sky, and he realizes, with a start, that he owes him all over again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lesbians? in my dnf fic?
> 
> fun fact: arla and alvarez were supposed to be like random side characters id bring up once then never again but then i somehow made them important to the plot oops lol


End file.
